International Man of Mystery

What do we really know of William Shakespeare? He (probably) wrote several plays that are widely heralded as classics. He borrowed ideas liberally from many sources. While he was reasonably well-off, he was never as famous as one would think, given the amount of accolades and attention sent his way.

Bill Bryson tries to answer these questions in Shakespeare - The World as Stage, a brief look at the life (and times) of William Shakespeare.

This is a short book, which is appropriate, considering the rather large number of primary historical sources available to today's historians. Considering the place Shakespeare's work holds in modern literature, one could find this rather surprising; however, the years and shoddy record keeping of the time have made Shakespeare more a mystery than the world's most famous playwright.

I'm a big fan of Bryson's work - he has a humorous, light writing style, and his research is always first rate. It's the little facts and the side characters that bring Bryson's works to life. For example, there are only six examples of Shakespeare's signature remaining in the world today . . . and none of them are spelled the same way. Charles and Hulda Wallace, a Nebraska couple, found many examples of Shakespeare in the public record early in the 20th century; they probably would have found more, except that Charles became increasingly paranoid and was let go by the University of Nebraska, where he was a professor. Don't feel bad for Wallace though - his follow-up career was looking at land and determining if it contained oil. He sunk most of his remaining money in 160 acres in Texas - that happened to be one of the richest oil finds in history. Wallace, among others are some of the major players in Shakespeare scholarship.

In addition to the eccentric side characters, Bryson spends time acknowledging the debt we owe Shakespeare today:

"Among the first words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany, and countless others (including countless). Where would we be without them? He was particularly prolific, as David Crystal points out, when it came to attaching un- prefixes to existing words to make new words that no one had though of before - unmask, unhand, unlock, untie, unveil and no fewer than309 others in a similar vein. Consider how helplessly prolix the alternatives to any of these terms are and you appreciate how much punch Shakespeare gave English."

Suffice to say, I enjoyed this book a lot. It's a nice, simple introduction to the life of a man who helped shape literature and language today.

Paperweight

I sat down last week to do some serious goofing off in front of the computer screen. I had the itch to get my nerd on. I sat down and proceeded to log in, only to discover that as I typed, nothing happened.

I rebooted. Same result. Concerned, I looked up the controls and found the keyboard driver had been corrupted. This was another sign.

It started with the mysterious internet activity as I was doing something online. Then there were the vague messages from my virus software saying it was trying to shut down but couldn't. I began to suspect that this was no longer the computer I had brought home last year.

It was corrupt. Unclean. Virus-laden.

I tried reinstalling the drivers, but I couldn't locate them; nor could I bring them up via the internet, since I couldn't type addresses. Basically, I had a paperweight that hummed softly. Not very useful.

So I did what I always do when I have a computer problem - hit up my brother for help. For the cost of lunch, he confirmed my suspicions: a virus was running amok through my hard drive.

Now I have a newly-rebuilt hard drive, and I've spent the last week reinstalling software and jumping through the hoops of getting my computer back to where it was before the crash.

It's annoying that we live in a world where computers nearly think for themselves and we communicate instantaneously, and some horse's ass gets his jollies by fucking with other people's stuff.

I've taken steps to insure that my computer is more secure, and all my work stuff is on my Mac, which isn't under much virus threat. So it really was a case of no harm, no foul. I still want to kick the little twerp who wrote the virus in the ass though.

Gangs of Chicago

On a fall day in 1989, Sudhir Venkatesh, a Master's sociology student at the University of Chicago, wandered into nearby housing projects, something he was explicitly warned against. Venkatesh was armed only with his wits and an old sociology survey, asking questions such as "What does it feel like to be black and poor?"

Fortunately, Venkatesh is nearly fearless and he's equally curious, because he came away from that night having met JT, a leader of the Black Kings, one of the biggest gangs in Chicago. He chronicled this story in Gang Leader for a Day, in which he described the five years he spent with JT and others in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago.

This was an amazing book; Venkatesh, in addition to being fearless, curious and somewhat naive, is also one hell of a writer, and the final product is easy to read and well worth the time.

As he spent more time in the housing projects learning more about the inner workings of the gang, he also learned how the people living there deal with the presence of poverty and the crack-dealing gangs. He never glorified there life; in fact, Venkatesh was frequently uncomfortable around JT when he enforced his rules through violence or when he discussed aspects of the drug trade, and as he gained the trust of the residents, he lost the trust of the police assigned to the projects.

In the end, Gang Leader for A Day is a fascinating look at inner-city poverty, and how the residents, gangs, and others live and work together in a fragile, somewhat uneasy alliance.

Looking Back

A few weeks ago, someone asked me just how much I read. I couldn't answer. I probably read 25-30 books last year, but I honestly can't say for certain. So my plan is to write a paragraph or two about everything I read this year and see just how far I get. I already posted one review, and here's the second.

I'm shamefully ignorant of Missouri and St. Louis history. I know quite a bit about US and world history, but Missouri & St. Louis? Little, if any. This is not something I'm proud of. St. Louis has a long and distinguished history as French and Spanish traders settled a small outpost just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

Which led me to A History of Missouri: 1673 to 1820 by William E. Parrish. It's the first in a series regarding the region's history. I found this to be fairly interesting, especially in the early settlement period, where names such as the Chouteau, Christy, and Rosati frequently came up.

I'm not going to call this a particularly engrossing book, however. Parrish's writing style is very dry and factual. There's not a lot of side stories or deep looks into the characters of the early settlers of the region, but that's not the purpose of the book or the series. As a survey of Missouri history, it was very informative and a quick 200 pages, which made it nice to read as I recovered from the flu last week.

I'll probably pick up the next book in the series sometime this spring, but I have plenty to occupy my time between now and then.

Life and Liberty

A while back I heard an interview with Andrew Napolitano, a judicial analyst with Fox News. His most recent book, A Nation of Sheep, discusses government excesses in a post-911 world. I poked around the library, but was unable to find that book. I wound up reading Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws, his earlier book.

Napolitano's basic argument is that the US government willingly and happily breaks laws every day in order to enforce them. The book is full of examples ranging from simple criminal cases to post-911 abuses, including the questionable incarcerations of Jose Padilla and Yasir Hamdi. Napolitano's basic theme is that government is not your friend.

This book is an eye-opener, and it's disturbing to see just how bad thing could be even before September 11. Unfortunately, it seemed like Napolitano went out of his way to personally bash Bill Clinton and Janet Reno several times; no surprise given his background and current affiliations.

Still, partisan sniping aside, this is a worthwhile book to read, if for no other reason to see that our government, like any other man-made institution, is just as fallible as any other, and requires supervision and vigilance lest it run amok.

Downtime

I came home Friday with a song in my heart and the flu in my lungs, so I've spent a lot of time enjoying Saturday television and looking over the blog - between bouts of fever delirium (102 degrees! Let the good times roll!) . I have a few ideas on changes, but for now, you'll just have to enjoy the new header graphic.

Corporate Responsibility

I bought a new cell phone a few months ago. It's small, lets me check e-mail, and lets me talk to people who are far away. In short, I've been pretty happy with it.

One thing that attracted me to said phone was the price tag. It was fairly inexpensive, and with the rebate, I was getting 1/3 off the price; plus, all I had to do was sign a two-year contract. No problem; I'm generally happy with my carrier, so two years is fine by me.

So a few nights back, I checked the rebate's status and discovered it was declined.

Huh.

Following the instructions on the web page, I called the listed phone number, and was told to call a different number. Because apparently, the number listed was the customer service number; I didn't have a problem for them - it was the rebate they offered. Steam started leaking from my ears at this point.

I called the new number, and waited. And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

All the while, I passed time by looking up rival phone companies' plans and phones, and figured I would save them a lot of trouble by simply dropping them and going with someone else. Meanwhile, every six seconds, a recording came on, telling me how they appreciated my business. Right.

Finally, a human voice spoke through the phone. She asked for account information, which I gave, and when I asked why the rebate was declined, she said it was because I didn't sign up for a two-year contract extension.

"Wrong," I interrupted her pre-programmed sales droning. "I signed one the night I bought the phone. Check your records, because I'll fax them to you tonight if you don't find them there."

"Hmm. Let me check." A minute or so passed. "I checked and you were right, sir. I don't know why this happened. I'm expediting your check."

I thanked her and hung up.

Now, I may not be the brightest soul on earth, but two years ago, I purchased two phones through this company, and they tried pulling a similar trick. Unfortunately for them, I keep pretty good records and was able to prove that they were full of crap. It seems awfully strange that the same damned thing would happen to me a few years later. I wonder why they're losing business in droves.

I've long thought the cell phone industry in this country was a joke; phones that are way overpriced so that the discounts can draw in new customers; service that's lackluster at best; oh, and a small honesty problem on top of that. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to envision them declining all rebates automatically, gambling that a fairly small percentage of customers will call in and fight them.

I had already considered going to a new carrier when the contract was up; thanks to this little incident, I'm not considering anymore.

In Honor of Cloverfield

Forget this new-fangled johnny-come-lately I'm-gonna-eat-Manhattan wannabe. Here's a real monster facing his greatest foe:

Stress for Lunch

You want to know what's fun? Going to get a haircut at lunch.

You want to know what's even more fun? Discovering as you're leaving that the gentleman who was finishing up as you arrived accidentally took your jacket instead of his (they're both black leather jackets).

You want to know what's especially fun about this? My car keys, work access card, and cell phone were in the pockets of said jacket.

Ten minutes and about 20 frantic calls to my cell phone, he finally realized his mistake and returned the jacket.

Yikes

One thing about reading history: you get to see just how close we repeatedly come to accidentally blowing ourselves and others up.

Crawling Out of the Weeds

Before I start here, I want to thank everyone for the kind wishes and thoughts in my earlier post. I really appreciate it.

Now, on with the inanity . . .

Christmas crept up on us this year, and by Sunday I was starting to sweat it. Sure, the shopping was finished, but there was the little matter of the seven people we were having over for dinner. The house was a wreck and the fridge was bursting at the seams with provisions. Fortunately, we had a plan.

As Darcy made a pie Monday night, I brined the turkey (If you ever do anything with a turkey, you should brine it - I'm not kidding I brine most pork or poultry these days, and it's well worth the time and effort). And for a brief moment on Tuesday, it looked as if the plan would hold together.

Now, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I've never cooked a turkey before. Chicken? Yes, I've baked, fried, stuffed, sauteed, and broiled many a chicken, but their larger cousins somehow eluded me all these years. So with a hearty laugh of bravado and a healthy belt of cheap whiskey, I prepared to cook the best damned turkey that ever graced a Christmas dinner.

First, I lugged the cooler containing the brining bird out of the sunroom, where it spent the night. I pulled it out along with the lemon halves, cinnamon sticks and bay leaves - I stuffed those into the bird itself. Then taking advantage of a little trick we'd learned - flip the turkey over and cook it breast-side down - all the juices flow into the turkey breast, making it that much more moist and juicy.

Yes, it looks ugly, but let's be realistic - who carves a turkey at the table? If I tried that, my guests would be covered in grease, skin and scraps of meat. Plus, if I'm using an electric carving knife, someone's going home without a nose or a finger or two. And when they leave the house, covered in turkey trimmings and bleeding from various cuts, all the stray dogs within a five-mile radius will descend upon them.

And folks, that just wouldn't be pretty. Not at all.

So after inserting the thermometer into the thigh, and inserting a second one into another part of the bird (I don't trust my remote thermometer. It tried to kill me earlier this year, and things just haven't been the same since), and dropped it straight into the oven.

A few hours later, I checked my lying-ass thermometer, which said the bird was a good 155 degrees, meaning it had to come out soon. The backup said it was 180 degrees. That was bad. That meant I'd overcooked it, and I would be serving my guests Jack-in-the-Box. So we took it out, and after poking and prodding it with both thermometers, we decided our 18 pound turkey was finished cooking.

In three hours. Three short hours.

An hour before everyone was slated to arrive, I started carving the turkey. I became a little concerned when I flipped it over and discovered the temperature-popper-thing hadn't popped out. I became more concerned when I cut into the turkey and found the meat had a nice pinkish-red look to it the deeper I cut into the bird.

Last time I checked, raw turkey is probably not high on most people's delicacy list. And unfortunately, stuffing it into the oven wasn't an option - I was trying to turn cornbread soup into cornbread stuffing.

We decided a little cornbread stuffing would be a great accompaniment to dinner. After a little poking on the internets, I found a recipe, which I doubled, only to find the contents of the bowl didn't resemble stuffing so much as it resembled a bowl of runny scrambled eggs.

Fuck it, I thought, and chucked that bad boy into the oven. I checked it 30 minutes later, only to find I had a nice cornbread soup going. So I did what any smart cook would do . . . I turned up the oven and hoped some of that liquid would find its way out of my stuffing.

Unfortunately, this pan took up valuable real estate in my smallish oven, and if I didn't want to poison our guests, I had to do something with the turkey.

After poking around the kitchen, I found some baking pans. I carved up the bird, and dropped the pieces into the baking pans along with some pan drippings and I covered it with aluminum foil. An hour later, I took them out of the oven.

And I'll be damned if it didn't work. The turkey was edible (and quite tasty if I say so myself), the stuffing, while still a touch moist, was pretty good, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Most importantly, no one complained of stomach pains or other food poisoning symptoms.

So after eating a fine meal, exchanging gifts, and scaring a poor innocent family as they watched me play Scrabble, Darcy and I flopped down on the couch together, and enjoyed a successful, if somewhat stressful Christmas dinner - hopefully the first of many.

Unfortunately, the magic Christmas elves didn't find their way into the kitchen, which looked as if someone ransacked it during a tornado. And even though I swore we'd be ringing in the new year before we'd see the kitchen counters again, we were able to shovel our way through the mess, returning things to the status quo.

Wow

I'm not sure whether to laugh, groan, or write the newspaper (granted, it's the New York Post - I doubt they'd care, especially considering that most New Yorkers probably don't even realize that there actually is a state called Missouri - it's one of those 49 other states that isn't New York, and someone writing a letter from there isn't high on their list of concerns) at this headline.

Another Goodbye

There are moments you hope never end; moments that are so perfect you want them to last on forever. Take this picture - it was taken about a month ago. It's my grandmother, Mimi, playing with her newest great-grandson. Three days earlier, he'd arrived in the United States in the arms of my brother and sister-in-law. Aiden was meeting his new great-grandmother for the first time.

Unfortunately, all perfect moments come to an end.

Two weeks ago, my phone rang at work. It was my mother, telling me that she was following an ambulance to the hospital. My grandmother had apparently suffered a stroke sometime that morning, and she had most likely been alone several hours before anyone knew there was a problem.

A week ago, I stood in a sweltering, institutionalized room in the hospice wing of a nursing home, watching her slowly fade. The stroke had been massive, and at 93 there was little hope of recovery. She was only able to communicate intermittently at best, so we gathered, we watched and waited.

It's hard watching anyone go through something like this, let alone a loved one. You don't know how aware she is; whether she knows that she's surrounded by family; how much of her survived the stroke.

And I think that's the cruelest part of it all. She was fiercely independent. She lived alone up until the stroke, and she fought like hell for three years against even a cleaning lady coming in once or twice a week. (Incidentally, she fired her cleaning lady the day before the stroke). She despised the cane and later the walker, but she realized that they had become necessary. Her mind, while still sharp, was trapped within her slowly failing body.

She raised her two children alone after my grandfather died in 1950. She was 36. She didn't have her GED until 1966; she worked until she was 82. She carried a picture of my grandfather in her wallet until the day she died.

Seeing her lying in a hospice bed, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to laugh was nearly unbearable. I only hope that our presence there made it a little easier on her.

We buried Mimi on Sunday. Family, friends and loved ones trudged through the snow and ice to say farewell. We miss her, and we always will.

Humbug

Yesterday, I made my first post-Thanksgiving trip into retail world. In the best of times, I try avoid the retail world, around Christmas time, my hermit instincts take over and I start trying to figure out how I can do all my shopping over the internet, which I hear they have on computers now.

To most people, the Christmas shopping season is a wonderful time spent thinking about loved ones while trying to find that perfect gift. It’s capped by a day of family get-together time. In the meantime, the poor retail workers see the dirty underbelly of all this magic.

I spent ten years working at Target, and even though I didn’t drink back in my impressionable youth, a few nights working the floor at Target after December 1, and I was thinking how nice a bottle of whiskey would be. (Of course, part of me wanted it simply to throw the empty bottle at the woman who just finished calling me everything but a white man because she figured it would be fine to wait until Dec. 23 to buy her kid the Bouncing Tigger doll).

Black Friday is that much blacker if you have to wake up at 4:00 to trudge into work on a freezing cold morning, only to find 800 people lined up at the doors, and if you’re really lucky, you draw the short straw and get to open the doors for them. Fortunately, I never “won” that particular lottery. I suppose it could have been worse – I could have had to be into work in time to open the place at 4:00.

My favorite memory of those times was working as a cart jockey on Christmas Eve and counting the number of empty liquor bottles in the carts and strewn across the parking lot. Merry Christmas indeed; in those days my goal was simply to make it home without becoming the hood ornament of the beaten-up Plymouth swerving from one side of the road to the other.

All this went through my head as I wandered the store, not listening to the Christmas Carols piped in over the PA and trying to finish up so I could go home.

Fortunately, the express line was short. Unfortunately, the cashier was brand-new, and Lord, was he slow. As I finally made it to the front of the line and handed over my cash for my $6.64 purchase, I began to wonder why it was taking so long for my change to find its way back to me.

It seems that the cashier didn’t enter $10 as the amount tendered, so he had to figure out how much change to give me – the machine simply said I wasn’t owed any change, which he knew was wrong, to his credit, but unfortunately, his math skills weren’t far enough along to actually figure out the exact amount.

“It’s $3.34,” I said. He thanked me and handed over the change, which I suppose is a plus. I once trained a kid as a cashier who could neither do the math to give change nor did he know how much each coin was worth. Needless to say, he became a cart jockey relatively quickly. For all I know, the kid’s probably teaching math somewhere nowadays.

In any case, it’s basically my same annual case of the Christmas blahs. Once upon a time, I thought that when I was finished with retail, I would be cured of them forever; however, it seems like they hibernate somewhere in my soul, waiting to come out on Black Friday and plod along through until the New Year.

The lesson here seems to be that I shouldn’t shop. Ever. And I really need to dig out my Bah Humbug shirt soon. It’s time has come.

Rambling Post-Thanksgiving Post

Thanksgiving was fun as always, but this year we had an extra reason to be thankful. Meet my nephew, Aiden. In addition to being awfully cute, he very quickly figured out how to work a crowd, which served him well at assorted Thanksgiving dinners and open houses over the weekend.

As for the long weekend, it was hectic and very busy, including time spent finishing a job I started a couple of weeks ago - pulling up the carpeting on the first floor of my house. After studying the underside of the carpet, I've come to the conclusion that someday scholars are going to discover that the name Trudy descends from ancient Aramaic and translates into "very small bladder". Egad. There might have been one or two spots on the dining room floor she didn't hit, but I sure wasn't seeing them.

Saturday was spent at the aforementioned open house for Aiden, where he was exposed to birthday cake for the first time. Apparently, he wasn't a big fan of sweets, until Darcy gave him the cake she'd baked for him. Now, he's a thirteen-month-old sugar junkie, crawling the floors of his new home, looking for a fix.

Or maybe he's just crawling. I hear kids do that, after all.

In any case, Aiden is back at home with his new family and settling in nicely by all accounts. Welcome to the family, Aiden.

Faux Pas

I've taken to the gym again - especially since I get free membership at the JCC, thanks to Darcy's employment there. Overall, I've been very happy with the experience - people are really there to exercise, if they're going to chat, they take it elsewhere.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I work on cardio training. Right now, I'm focusing on building endurance by treadmill running. After I get over my total hatred of running, I may try taking it up outside, weather permitting, but for now, I'm sticking to the treadmill. After a treadmill session, I hit the elliptical machine, where I can work on cardio and read while doing it. (Yes, they have TVs, but once you've seen Judge Judy 100 or so times, the novelty wears off).

Wednesday, I carried in my latest acquisition from the library - a dual biography on George Patton and Erwin Rommel, two of the most famous generals of World War II. As I carried it into the building and glanced down at the book.

And noticed the cover was liberally sprinkled with swastikas. As I'm walking into the JCC - also known as the Jewish Community Center.

Yes, there were stars as well, but seeing as I was walking into a building containing people who in all likelihood:

• fought in the war
• survived a concentration camp

I thought that perhaps I should go ahead and leave it in my locker. I realize that my intentions were pure, but a small part of me feared chugging away on the elliptical machine, reading my book as an elderly gentleman walks by, sees the cover, flips out, screams "Auschwitz!" and smacks me upside the head with a cane.

Next time, I'll pick an alternate book from the nightstand. It just seems less painful that way.

Random Musings

After much hand wringing, debating, and household disasters, we finally set a wedding date, so things are finally moving along on that front. In about six months, Darcy and I will get married on a sunny Jamaican beach. Unless it rains. Or a hurricane hits. But right now, I'm aiming for an optimistic outlook.

Other things I've been chewing on lately:

• After two weeks of trying, I'm giving up on Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Typically, I find the stories behind the underground or indie music scene to be fascinating. However, this book continues driving home a simple truth about many rock and music stars: they're narcissistic fuck-ups. And really, if I wanted to learn more about fascinating narcissistic fuck-up, I'd read (or update) this blog more often.
• I actually started watching more television this year (thanks DVR!). I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but interestingly, the shows with better pilot episodes (Chuck, Reaper) are falling flat on their faces, thanks to their paper-thin premises, while shows with so-so pilots (Bionic Woman) are slowly improving. The writing is still fairly clunky and cringeworthy, but the show is in serious danger of not taking itself too seriously. And really, any show that features Isiah Washington getting kicked square in the nuts isn't half bad.
  
• Watching DVDs of The Wire. This show makes me wish I'd ponied up for HBO. This is what Homicide could have been without all the "input" from NBC. Luther Mahoney was clearly a prototype for Avon Barksdale, and watching the case against Barksdale develop over the course of the season (I'm on season one) has been a hell of a ride. I'm dying for the next DVD to arrive courtesy of Netflix.
• Wanted: uses for apples. I think we're going apple picking tomorrow, meaning my kitchen will be overrun with approximately 20 lbs. of apples. I like apples. I like apple pie. Hell, I like applesauce, but I'm hoping there might be a few other options out there. Suggestions?

That's all for now. I need to get back to actually being productive. Enjoy the weekend!

Moment of Silence . . .

. . . for my fallen i-pod. The good always go out too young.

Here Goes Nothing

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 2312296

Most Expensive Playlist Ever

Here's a list of the songs that cost Jammie Thomas $222,000 in her failed defense against an RIAA lawsuit. It came from here.

• Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle"; "November Rain"
• Vanessa Williams "Save the Best for Last"
• Janet Jackson "Let's What Awhile"
• Gloria Estefan "Here We Are"; "Coming Out of the Heart"; "Rhythm is Gonna Get You"
• Goo Goo Dolls "Iris"
• Journey "Faithfully"; "Don't Stop Believing"
• Sara McLachlan "Possession"; "Building a Mystery"
• Aerosmith "Cryin'"
• Linkin Park "One Step Closer
• Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
• Reba McEntire "One Honest Heart"
• Bryan Adams "Somebody"
• No Doubt "Bathwater"; "Hella Good"; "Different People"
• Sheryl Crow "Run Baby Run"
• Richard Marx "Now and Forever"
• Destiny's Child "Bills, Bills, Bills"
• Green Day "Basket Case"

I'm not sure I'd ever want to pay $1 for a Gloria Estefan album, let alone $9,258. (Miami Sound Machine? That's another story entirely). I wish I could say I was surprised she lost, but I'm not. My big question now is whether these artists are going to see one penny from this judgment The RIAA won on their "behalf".

Waking Up

At least when I came home, my new MacBook Pro was waiting for me. Ooh. Shiny.

Night Terrors

Boss runs in 20 minutes before I'm ready to leave, declaring a drop everything emergency. A piece of documentation HAS to make it in the next build. Crap.

After running around for 40 minutes and nearly finishing, I learn that this piece of documentation is not required to fix the bug after all, so I didn't have to do anything. Crap.

Nightmare Continues

I was halfway to work this morning when I realized that I left my headphones at home.

Nightmare Begins

The bed collapsed in the middle of the night . . . again.

T Time

I spent the morning revelling in the peace of quiet and solitude. There were no slot machine ringing away; no video screens threatening me with Rita Rudner or Carrot Top visits; no bright lights shining in my face.

Truthfully, I kind of miss it already, but it's great to be home.

Men live by a few simple rules; one of the most important is what goes on the road stays on the road; however, I'm going to share one tale, because it must be told.

If you're looking for a quiet spot to toss back a couple of martinis and reflect on the week, stay the hell away from the Hofbrauhaus. Imagine a giant room full of long tables, and each of those tables contains about 20 or so people, drinking from one liter steins full of beer. It's Vegas, so most people are already gloriously, raucously drunk. Oh, and there's a band playing "Sweet Caroline" and "Summer of '69" between bouts of "Ein Prosit" ( Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, hoi, hoi, hoi!) in the corner. And the room's singing along.

The room was full of energy; it was loud. It was crazy. It was a roomful of fools, and apparently, one or more of them needed pitying. Because Mr. T walked in the door.

Yes, Mr. T. Mr. motherfucking T.

At first, no one noticed, he walked in with a small entourage and took the seat next to us. I'm ashamed to admit that he walked right past me, and while I thought he looked familiar, I didn't recognize him (I just finished one of those steins and was starting on the second). But someone did, becuase I soon heard the buzz: "Mr. T! Mr. T!"

The house got wind of the celebrity and decided to celebrate, because the next thing I know, the house band is playing the theme to the A-Team, and Mr. T runs up on stage and danced along to it. Afterwards, he returned to the table and continued partying with his friends.

We moved on to further adventures in a sleep-deprived weekend.

And so, I add Mr. T to the top of my list of celebrity encounters. Seeing Mr. T in Vegas is far more interesting than pissing next to Bob Costas and not nearly as awkward as realizing that Bobby Bonilla was sitting next to me at a strip club.

Viva Las Vegas

I'm off to the happiest place on Earth for a few days of drunken debauchery and donkey poker for this guy. I'll be back Sunday.

Burger Reconstructed

I woke up Saturday with a spring in my step and a song in my heart; it was going to be a lazy Saturday. We had no plans; I could sit around in my shorts, drinking beer and slowly feel my brains ooze out of my ears while watching bad television all day.

Unfortunately, I failed to consult all the stakeholders in this particular plan, so an hour later, I was busy vacuuming the house after putting clothes away.

In any case, I wasn’t complaining; I still had a plan. I still had outs. I was going to wait until later in the day and fire up the grill.

As I sit and enjoy an early-evening summer breeze, burgers would be cooking not three feet from me, and nothing goes better with grilling than an ice-cold beer.

However, fate decided to go ahead and kick me in the shins once again.

I pulled the meat out of the freezer only to discover that the bag had split open, leaving a chunk of meat freezer burned. No problem; I could just toss that small piece after it thaws. After wrapping the meat in plastic, I dropped it in cold water to speed the thawing process . . .

. . . only to discover, 30 or so minutes later, that water had seeped into the plastic and waterlogged the ground beef.

Now I had soaked ground beef, and worse, the water washed away a lot of the juice from the beef. So we had cold, flavor-free beef soup. Not appetizing.

I considered going out, but I wanted to grill, dammit! I needed a plan . . .

Basically, the hamburger meat needed something to help it bind together, and some fat to replace the washed-away fat. I decided on a mixture of breadcrumbs and butter. The butter would replace some of the lost fat and the breadcrumbs would bind the meat together. And if it didn’t work, then what the hell? McDonald’s wasn’t that far off. After adding my patented mixture of garlic powder, kosher salt, pepper, onions and cayenne, I was ready for the experiment to continue.

Surprisingly, the grilling went fairly well. There was some flaring due to the butter content, but the burgers held together very well. However, due to crumbling fears, I decided to cook them up to medium-well to well done instead of my usual medium-rare.

The results?

Not bad. Not good, but not bad. The breadcrumbs gave the burgers an almost meatloaf-like consistency, which we didn’t really enjoy much, but the flavor was fine. Next time, I might use fewer breadcrumbs.

Or not dowse the beef in water without making sure it’s better sealed first. Or just not get out of bed in the first place.

Cranky

Four days ago, I quit drinking soda. Four days. Four whole days. Ninety-six hours. For some of you, this might not seem too long. "Four days is nothing," you think, smugly sitting back and sipping at your Corona.

Well, for me, it's a nightmare. For a long time, I drank soda like it was water. I finally switched to diet about 10 years ago when I discovered that drinking a case of regular soda a week was a bad idea. Perhaps diet soda is as well, but in any case, I drink too damn much of the stuff. So I let it go.

And after the shakes passed on Monday, things weren't too bad. I apologized to one of the women I work with after I threw a stapler at her when she said good morning, and she seemed okay with it. (I'm not too worried - I'm so totally in with HR these days. After our fourth "discussion" about my temper, we're tight.)

Okay. I didn't throw a stapler. But I gave her a dirty look. And boy, it was a mean one.

But you know what makes a cranky mood really take off? Another crank. Fortunately, I met one today.

I was sitting around the Honda dealer, waiting for my car to be fixed. (Apparently, you have to actually CHANGE the oil in those things . . . who knew?) There were five of us sitting in the waiting room, all reading, as Judge Judy fumigated her wisdom upon several unsuspecting plaintiffs and defendants. And again, I'd like to point out for the record that everyone in the room was reading a book, magazine or newspaper. (I was also glancing at the soda machine, wondering if I could somehow reach inside it and get a Diet Pepsi out).

A young guy walked in, sat down and started reading himself. He glanced at the TV, then asked if anyone was watching it. Most everyone either nodded no or said so. The young guy stood up and turned off the television. As he sat down, he said "Now we can all read in peace."

"What's this all about?" piped up the older man sitting next to me.

The young guy said "I just figured since everyone was reading, I'd turn off the television. It was distracting."

"So you just decided this for all of us," the old man kind of growled, kind of sneered.

Already thinking of running up to the soda machine and shaking it until a sweet, sweet Diet Pepsi came out, I realized this horse's ass was annoying me. He'd been reading his paper. He wasn't watching television. Besides that, he should be thanking the kid for turning Judge Judy off. I could actually feeling the room growing smarter. On top of this, I was already jonesing for a soda, and his "speaking up" for my rights pissed me off.

"He asked if anyone was watching it. No one said they were. If you have such a big problem with it, then turn it back on. Otherwise, shut up." I said. The woman across from me nodded emphatically.

The old man kind of harumphed and growled then went back to his paper. A few minutes later, he finished the story he was reading and started pacing the room like an old, toothless caged lion, since I guess he figured we literary types weren't down with his "TV".

He left when his car was finished, with a final glare at the rest of us.

I guess someone else being cranky brings out my competitive nature. I'm not sure I would have said anything otherwise. Perhaps I would have been nicer. All I know is that I wasn't going to let someone out-crank me today.

No Life

Okay, so I read it in ten hours; that's sort of a day, isn't it?

It's a Weekend Post . . .

. . . meaning it's a little rambling and too short (except for both of you who read this and wonder if there's something better to occupy your time - like changing the furnace filter or cleaning the gutters).

Well, the A/C is back up and running. My farewell to the old system was nearly as tearful as I figured it would be: I started kicking it and screaming uncontrollably until I tore open my hand on the unit's rusty exterior and bled all over the place, bringing a few tears to my eyes. Fortunately, the contractor is a very capable medic, and he stopped the bleeding in short order. I probably should have gone to the hospital, but so far fighting lockjaw has proven to be a good workout.

Okay, maybe I embellished the last paragraph a bit. I did trip over the unit and scraped my hand on the concrete, but I did tear up a bit. The contractor just shook his head sadly and went about his work.

However, as I sat at my desk at work and pretended to actually do something, I realized that this has not been a relaxing summer - far from it. Fortunately, my awesome fiance agreed to my logical, well-reasoned request to do nothing this weekend (replace "logical, well-reasoned request" with "pathetic cries and whining" and you get a clearer picture of the dynamic in my household). So we're going to hit Borders on Saturday morning for my Harry Potter fix (I'd go tonight but that damn restraining order is still in place) and head up to the pool for a day of swimming and doing little. And yes, I already told Darcy she's going to be a Harry Potter widow until I finish the book sometime on Sunday or Monday.

The only drawback to this plan is the pool frowns on alcohol consumption. I'll have to hold off until Sunday, when the housework begins.

Perverse and Twisted, It Is

My house has a twisted sense of humor. Take this weekend as an example:

The plumbers and carpenters cleared out Friday, leaving behind a patched up ceiling, a mostly-new plumbing stack and thin layer of dust over the house.

We spent much of Saturday cleaning up and setting the kitchen up again. The house was getting dangerously close to livable again, a state of affairs that the house was simply NOT going to tolerate.

After completing our labors for the day, we headed out to catch the new Harry Potter movie (review coming soon; short version: meh) and returned home. As I walked into the back yard, I thought the air conditioner sounded kind of funny.

After going inside and feeling warm air blowing from the vents that it WAS making a funny noise, only not funny HA HA, just . . . funny.

The second sign of trouble was when I walked out and felt the heat radiating off the air conditioning unit. The third sign? The unit was running but the fan wasn't turning. That's bad.

A contractor who came out Sunday confirmed my worst fears: it was fixable, but would dropping $800 into a 17-year-old A/C unit make a lot of sense, especially when the compressor was probably damaged due to the fan not turning for a couple of hours?

So suffice to say, we're getting a new air conditioner and furnace tomorrow. Whoever buys this house in the next year or two is going to sing my praises. I probably won't be alive, since the house, sensing that I've replaced most everything that can fail, will either spontaneously combust or drag itself outside the time/space continuum, a la the end of Poltergeist.

Hopefully, I'll be out when it finally happens, but I don't think the house is going to let me get away that easily.

More Money Than Brains

Crazed fans spend $500 to create plastic shards and spare parts. After you factor in the $500 they probably paid someone to stand in line for them throughout Friday, you have a spectacular waste of money. I would have sold them a box of broken phones for only $100.

Collapse

I know - I've been away for awhile; here's a few reasons why:

• Work - Because THE MAN gets bitchy when I stop showing up for weeks on end. Oh, and I don't get paid.
  
• More work - I'm balancing two freelance writing jobs on the side. See above bullet regarding bitchiness and being paid.
  
• Movement - Darcy is moving in to my house, along with all of her stuff. And let me tell you, there's a lot of stuff.
• Crap - Literally - I'm having at least half of my plumbing waste stack replaced before it fully gives out. If that were to happen, then no one would be happy in my house. So I've been dealing with contractors galore. Fortunately, it's looking like the work will be done within the next week or two.

So let's talk about stuff. Like I said, Darcy has a lot of it, and one of the things she has is a semi-antique bed frame. It has a headboard AND a footboard. I've never had either of these things, so it's kind of novel.

We set up the bed frame and for a week, slept well and soundly in it. Until Thursday.

I woke up around 4:00 AM, feeling kind of cold. Our bedroom is on the second floor of my house - also known as the oven, due to heat's propensity to rise, and my house's lousy insulation. But at least the central air conditioning is old and sucks, so we have that going for us. In any case, I digress - frequently, I go to bed on top of the covers, but sometimes in the middle of the night, thanks to the fans and window unit AC, it gets pretty cool in there. So at 4:00, I climbed under the covers . . . and the bed collapsed.

One of the side supports holding the slats under the bed gave out completely, dropping one quarter of the bed. After looking it over for a few minutes, we took the frame apart, set up the box springs and mattress back up on the floor and went back to bed.

At this point, I'm not sure what we're going to do. I'd prefer not to buy a new frame, and fixing it probably isn't an option. (I'm, how do you say it -- incompetent with the tools, and it's very possible I'll wind up dumping one or both of us on the floor in a half-assed repair effort. It's why I'm hiring plumbers and carpenters to work on the house. If I did it, things would turn ugly fast).

Living like we just graduated from college, while kind of fun in a nostalgic sense, grows old very quickly. So's waking up on the floor. At least we know the mattress can't fall any further. If it did, we'd wind up in the dining room. Then it's the insurance company's problem.

Poker Funny

Warning: Here there be poker content.

You won't find this nearly as funny if you're not a poker fan.

/poker content.

Etiquette

So what exactly is the protocol when you walk around the corner of an aisle at Target and see an employee zipping up his pants and fastening his belt?

I was at a loss, so it came down to moving on to the next aisle while hoping I needed nothing in the original one or running away while screaming and clawing my eyes out.

Digging out a quarter, I flipped on it, and it came up heads. After deciding that meant I could keep my eyes, I moved on, hoping that he didn't get a happy ending in the detergent aisle - that's just nasty. Everyone knows that's what the pillow aisle is for - at least it was in my day.

But I digress. Maybe there was a perfectly innocent explanation for it - perhaps gravity intensified causing his pants to drop, or maybe he spontaneously lost 30 pounds, or maybe he's the kind of guy who adjusts himself in public.

In any case, I moved on, definitely a little older, probably a little less wise, and definitely disturbed.

Newton is a Harsh Master

It seemed like slow motion - the soda bottle slipped from my grasping fingers, slowly turning over as it sped towards the floor.

I tried making the catch, hoping to stave off the inevitable, but my reflexes aren't up to gravity's inflexible standards. The bottle landed on its side and the cap shot straight off and under the vending machine. Soda fountained up over the machine, me and the floor, and the bottle rocketed across the floor, propelled by a shower of soda. Fortunately, a table stopped it.

So there I stood, covered in Diet Pepsi, surveying the trail of soda ending under the nearby table.

At least the people in the kitchen clapped after it was over.

Seven Things

I was memed by Otis, so without further ado here are seven things you may not know about me:

1. I've been in the circus
When I was eight or so, my parents took us to the circus. As I recall, we had great seats - right on the floor level, and Mike and I showed our appreciation by bouncing off the walls, fueled to greater heights by the approximately six tons of cotton candy flowing through our veins.

A woman walked up and asked if we'd like to participate in the circus. Mom and Dad said yes. (I'm not sure whether this was a sign of a time long gone or if it showed just how desperate my parents were that we'd disappear - I'll take the former). They took Mike and I down to the access tunnels, where we boarded a big car shaped like a bubble with open sides. The bubble car drove out on to the floor of the circus, where we drove a lap around the acts, waving like mad the whole time. Rather than keep us in a life of taking care of the animals, they handed us back to our parents with certificates thanking us.

2. My dishes are hot
A year or so out of college, I spent a summer bartending at a local pops festival. Our customers were either suburban families or retirees, so while the hours sucked, the lousy tips made up for it. My boss was a complete horses ass who hated the summer bar staff. He was on the cusp of 30, and his sole ambition in life was to smoke pot and hook up with his high-school/early college age kitchen staff. He made sure to criticize everything about us.

My future roommate and I were sick of him and in need of dishes for our new apartment, so we went into the storage closet and helped ourselves. The place was closing soon anyway, and with a little luck, they would tag the discrepancy on our jackass boss. No such luck - the owners really didn't care. Last I heard, the jackass was working as a male stripper in New Orleans. I'm still eating off those dishes today.

3. I can play three musical instruments
In grade school, I started learning the violin. Not being loud or obnoxious enough, I traded it in for the baritone (sort of a baby tuba) and the valve trombone (a trombone for brass players too lazy to learn the slide positions). I had to give it all up in high school.

4. I've played golf once in my life
It nearly ended in a brawl.

5. I threw my hat at a kickball umpire in a fit of rage
We were getting our asses handed to us, and the ump kept blowing calls against us all day. After talking to her about it once, I went up to kick. She called it foul, and as I started to return to the batter's box, she suddenly changed her mind and called it fair, and I was out. I snapped, threw my hat at her and started cussing her out. The amazing part: she didn't toss me. In fact, she let me kick the ball again. For the record, I would have tossed me.

6. In crowds, I become claustrophobic
I start becoming unglued in big, densely-packed crowds.

7. I am the next step in human evolution
I have no wisdom teeth. None. Nor have I ever had a cavity. And I shall pass these traits along to my offspring, and eventually, my descendents will drive dentists out of work, ending the years and years of oppression and pain they have caused humanity with their drills, funny mirrors, blinding lights and novocaine. Mmm. Novocaine.

Tagging:
Chilly
Farrell
Mikala
Tracie
Gordon

Score!

WARNING: Here there be poker content.

Is there a sweeter feeling than flopping the nut full house with a straight and flush draw on the board - along with eight people in the pot?

Fortunately, no one seemed to notice my head exploding when I saw the flop.

This ends the poker content. Please return to your previous activities.

Taxing Back

I woke up with little desire to actually climb out of bed this morning. However, there was plenty to do, and so there but for the grace of God went I.

After a quick trip to the gym, I returned home to discover that one of my freelance clients is continuing his run of not paying me for services rendered. So after filing away my plan to ruin his Monday, we headed to Soulard's Farmer's Market. Loaded with produce, we headed to the grocery store. After that, we returned home.

For house projects, I had two simple tasks this afternoon:

1. Plant grass in the bald spot in the center of the back yard
2. Fix the clothesline I hung for Darcy

However, I stopped at 1 when my back gave out.

Sadly, this is the second time something like this has happened. The first was a few years ago, when I twinged my back playing in a softball double header. I spend the next day cooped up in a plane circling over the state of Florida waiting for the weather to clear. After landing, my brothers and I went to Dave and Buster's, where I wowed them with my McGuire-esque power on the batting simulator.

Let me tell you, people turn and look when you go from saying "THERE IT GOES! ANOTHER DINGER!" to "AIIIEEEEE!!!" and then fall over clutching your back. In a way, I was kind of like McGuire towards the end - except for the millions of dollars and the steroid probes. C'est la vie, I guess.

The next morning was worse - back spasms. While the rest of the family took a boat ride through the Everglades, I spent the afternoon passed out on the couch, unable to move. Apparently, I have little tolerance for muscle relaxants. Fortunately, my brother's 60-lb. Boxer, Allie, decided to keep me company - by climbing into my lap. I didn't even have the strength to ask her to move.

So today, after lugging bags of soil across the yard, I began feeling the first twinge, I figured I'd relax for a few minutes, and then go back and fix the clothesline. Nope. Pain shot down my back and into my legs as I stood in the back yard. Stiff breezes hurt. The sun hurt. Everything hurt. I (slowly) retreated back into the house.

One darvocet later, I can at least function. But this sucks. I can't move. All I can do is sit here and type. From a work productivity standpoint, it would be gold, but I have tickets to tonight's Son Volt concert, and I don't see any way I'm going to make it, at least without loading up on alcohol and pain medication.

Who knows? Maybe I'd enjoy the show more, propped up against the back wall with my head lolling into my chest and drool dripping down my chin, listening to Jay and the boys. But that drive home might be kind of rough. I kid! I kid! I wouldn't drive my car under the influence. Stealing one - perhaps, but my own? No.

Oh well. This should hopefully clear up by tomorrow. I probably will put myself on the DL for kickball, since I want to be healthy for the -ahem- playoff run. (At this point in the season, with our record, the odds of us making the playoffs are about as good as Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin appearing on the cover of Parenting magazine).

But that's alright. I have a computer, pain pills, a freelance assignment (different client), television, and a sympathetic fiance who rules. I should pull through this okay. And I'm sure the freelance client will enjoy what I come up with while on the darvocet. Good times, good times.

The Double Bind

What do you say about a mystery novel that sets itself up as a successor to The Great Gatsby? The Double Bind, by Christopher Bohjalian, populates a world living in the shadows of the roaring twenties, where Jay Gatsby’s palatial home is now a country club, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s son, Bobbie Crocker, is a homeless drifter who left behind his legacy – a collection of photos – to the homeless shelter that got him off the street.

Laurel Estabrook, a worker at the shelter, looks through the photos and sees one that possibly contains an image of her on the eve of a brutal assault that left her nearly dead. Laurel begins a journey to learn more about this mysterious photographer, and to find out how one born to a life of unimaginable privilege can fall so low. This journey is one that changes Laurel forever.

I picked this book up with some trepidation. I don’t really like the idea of a novel picking up where Gatsby left off. Do we really need to know what happened to the Buchanans after Gatsby’s murder? But the strong reviews left me intrigued and I picked it up, and after a slow start, I found I had trouble putting the book down. And I nearly threw it across the room when I finished it.

Bohjalian does a fantastic job building suspense as Laurel learns more about Bobbie’s past and begins feeling the walls close in on her. As she withdraws into Crocker’s past more and more, her friends and family begin to worry about her.

However, the book runs right off the tracks when it gets to the “twist” ending. Some of it is foreshadowed nicely throughout the book, with subtle clues placed throughout. Unfortunately, Bohjalian tries taking it too far, and largely ruins what was building into a taut thriller.

I don’t want to go into too much detail regarding the ending of the book, other than to say that it’s the interactions and point of view that hurt this book the most. Had it been written in the first person, it would have been a much stronger – and satisfying conclusion.

5.5/10

When "I Love You" Is Not Enough

Police said the man they arrested lived a few blocks from Crystal and may have had a romantic interest in the girl.

I have to wonder about this guy's thought processes: send cute notes or flowers anonymously? Nah - too cliche.

Talk to her and ask her out? I want to set myself apart from the other guys.

Kidnap her dog, behead it and send the severed head to her in a gift box? Eureka!

Somehow I can't see this elderly couple staring into each other's eyes while reminiscing about how he courted her by acting like Kevin Spacey in Seven.

I suppose it could have been worse - he could have decided to kidnap her grandmother. I hope he's given a little quiet time as a guest of the state.

Much Ado . . .

Turns out I was wrong - it was a leaky water supply after all. Took five minutes to fix. My visions of cracked wax rings and cracked plumbing stacks weren't true after all.

I still don't trust the house. It's looking at me all shifty.

We'd Prefer You Call it a Pee-Pee-Soaked Heck Hole

So I was cleaning the bathroom Saturday afternoon. I know - some people hit parades on St. Patrick's Day; others get stinking drunk; me? I clean my bathroom.

As I'm cleaning around the toilet, I notice water on the floor. Water. On the bathroom floor. I've been there before - many times. You want leaks in the bathroom? I've had them all - the tub has leaked due to cracked caulk and grout, the way the shower head was set up caused water to flow onto the floor of the bathroom, the roof leaked into the bathroom, the faucet leaked, the toilet tank leaked. Generally, it all wound up in the same place - on the kitchen ceiling directly below the bathroom. For a compound that we need to survive, water has brought me an awful lot of grief.

But I digress - there's a little water on the floor. I wipe it up and determine that there's a little water condensing on the water supply for the toilet. No big. I can deal with it, and deal with it I do. I head off to my room to clean in there - because it's how I choose to spend my Saturday. Huzzah.

Later, I return to the restroom to get some other cleaning paraphernalia, where I see a much greater amount of water on the floor - all around the base of the toilet.

Over the last few years, I've become more of a plumbing expert than I ever thought possible. I'm not ready to go pro, but I can usually look at something and say - with pretty good authority - that that's not right. And water pooling around the base of the toilet? Not right.

I wipe it up, flush and see if anymore water pools. Nope. Maybe it was a fluke, but there's one more test. One more test that will prove whether I'm going to fall into my old habit of worrying myself nearly to death about it when nothing is wrong, or whether I have a problem.

Yep. I had a problem. The wet spot in the plaster ceiling confirmed it. A few minutes later, the water to the toilet is off and we're headed off to greener pastures for the night. Darcy only had to spend a few minutes to talk me down from my idea of getting the can of gas for the lawn mower, splashing it around the first floor, lighting a match and walking off into the sunset. Apparently, there's laws against that sort of thing. Who knew?

Frequently, I'm accused of worrying things to death. What can I say? I'm only truly happy if I have some problem to solve - the more Gordian in scope, the better. I complain about my house, and do want to divest myself of it. But I'm trying to be more optimistic about this. A friend once told me that if the water damage to my house was as severe as I feared it, my bathroom would have long ago fallen into the kitchen. So far, that hasn't come to pass.

But the house - and bathroom follies haven't been all bad. I know what to look for in the next house (two bathrooms, ideally) and will be prepared to deal with them.

Of course, it'll be the entirely new set of problems that will tear off and kick me in the junk.

So Bobby, Do You Like Gladiator Movies?

“So the Spartans fight in their underwear?” asked Darcy after I showed her the trailer for 300. Earlier in the day I received a free pass to see in on the IMAX, so I figured I’d give her the right of first refusal – a right she accepted – something about watching 300 scantily-clad men slaughter thousands of Persians didn’t do much for her.

On the other hand, I was looking forward to seeing it – the impossible odds and fighting thing, that is – not the men fighting in underwear thing.

There are many reasons to see 300 – it’s a beautiful film, with scenes that look like they were lifted straight from Frank Miller’s graphic novel. Sometimes that doesn’t work too well (HULK SUCK! -errr SMASH!), but Zack Snyder, the director, and Larry Fong, the cinematographer, chose bright color and high contrasts to bring the pages to life.

Gerard Butler did a fine job as Leonidas, the king of the Spartans, pulling off a nice combination of regal authority and almost homicidal bloodlust.

And the fight scenes were spectacular if not a little repetitive. There’s only so many ways that you can show people being hacked to pieces, and this is where the movie started losing me.

On the one side, you have the Spartans and other Greeks, who all look like they came straight from the modeling agency. On the other side, there’s the Persian army, which looks like the casting call specified circus freaks and lepers. Persian soldiers range from eight-foot-tall ogres with blades replacing their hands to an unholy cross between humans and pigs, and don’t get me started on Xerxes, the Persian king. Rodrigo Santoro was apparently channeling Jaye Davidson in Stargate as he played Xerxes. (For those of you who haven't seen Stargate, let's just say that Ra, Davidson's character, was a very bad - and disturbing - "man").

I also had a problem when the Greeks – the Spartans especially – started spouting off about how they were fighting for their freedom. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I seem to recall that the Spartans weren’t exactly known for their open society.

And finally, I realize that movies like this are not historically accurate. I know this. I understand it, and yet it still irks me. If memory serves, Thermopylae was actually fought between a small Greek army and the Persians. The 300 Spartans stayed behind with a few hundred other Greeks when their position became untenable because the Persians found the goat trail, so the Spartans stayed behind to allow the remaining Greek army a chance to escape. I would have preferred they stuck to the idea that the Spartans were sacrificing themselves to save the beleaguered army rather than cries of FREEDOM! LIBERTY! EQUALITY!

But I nitpick. Overall, I enjoyed the movie for what it was – violent eye candy of the check-your-brain-in-at-the-door variety, and I can safely say I didn’t hate myself for having seen it.

6.0/10

Friendly Advice

Being a good citizen of the world, I thought I would share this little nugget with you: if you're planning a wedding, and your fiance goes to a bridal show, under no circumstances - and I mean NO CIRCUMSTANCES - let her fill out an information card for formalwear places.

As far as I'm concerned, she can fill out any other card she wants, but if the sound of your phone ringing at all hours with guys wanting to lease you the hippest formalwear and best deals around isn't your thing, beg her to hold off.

It's a Dog's Life

Mike Daisey was a slacker. He was content to bounce from temp job to temp job, long enough to make a little money, then he'd quit, live off savings and "perform" in community theater productions until the next temp job.

Until Amazon came to town.

21 Dog Years is the story of Daisey's three years with Amazon; how he climbed from the perpetual night of customer service, where windows were so rare that "grown men and women cried, schemed and had knife fights with letter openers in the bathrooms, where unscrupulous managers would take bets on who would be killed and who would walk away triumphant with a seat that received a few feeble rays for a few hours a day." Daisey hung up on callers and randomly sent free books to Norwegians, to Business Development, where Amazon searched for companies worthy of partnering with - companies with vision, drive and style. Companies like Pets.com, the poster child of failed dot-coms.

I enjoyed this book on many levels - Daisey's a witty writer, and he nails the rush of working in the dot-com world, a world where budgets were optional, profits were a far-off dream, and offices were "a trifecta of Batcave, Fortress of Solitude, and supervillain lair." I think that anyone who worked - even tangentially, like I did, in the dot-com world, can relate to this corporate mindset - where you were ACHIEVING THINGS, dammit, so who the hell cares about something silly like making payroll.

One of my favorite sayings is "It's not selling out - it's buying in!" I always tell friends that when they get the big promotion or new job, and lament about how they're not going to end up saving the world after all. Daisey buys in big-time - at first, but he begins to realize that for him, at least, tons of money and a 9-to-5 aren't the answer.

It's a fun book, and a great look back at one of the more -interesting- times in recent history.

Unsinkable

The old standards flowed from the duet as the lights from the skyline filtered in through the window. Outside, the bitter cold kept all but the hardiest (or craziest) souls indoors.

I sat across the table from Darcy, smiling. Looking at her. Enjoying our time together as we traveled up the river. Around us, couples sat at their own tables, enjoying quiet conversation, dinner or dancing, celebrating Valentine's Day with a dinner cruise up the Mississippi.

BUMP.

The boat shuddered lightly.

THUD.

We glanced out the window to see an impressive chunk of ice spinning away from the side of the boat. I opened my mouth to speak.

SSSCCRRRUNCH.

More ice scraped the side of the boat. Looking out the window, I tried judging how far it was to swim to the nearest shore. They did warn us that the cruise may end up being dockside if ice on the river was too thick, but the captain seemed to think all was well, and who am I to argue with the captain. And we wanted to scope the boat out to see how appropriate it would be to hold our wedding there next year.

BOOM. More ice off the hull.

We continued talking, dancing, trying not to worry as a crewman carried an armload of life preservers across the dance floor to some hidden locker. I began to wonder if they'd renamed the Becky Thatcher to Titanic recently.

"Darcy, I love you. But if this boat goes down and we find a door or piece of flotsam for you to float on, I'm making you scoot over. I refuse to freeze to death when there's a perfectly good door nearby."

She laughed. And then I'm pretty sure she was judging how hard it would be to keep me in the water while she sat high and dry on the wreckage.

The riverboat turned around and eventually made its way back to the mooring, safe, sound and afloat. So while we spent the rest of the evening dockside, it was much easier to enjoy ourselves while not wondering if we'd have to swim for it.

Huh

So I guess my computer thought it was being helpful when it deleted all the files off my iPod sometime last night. And while I appreciate initiative, I would have liked a little notification so I could have maybe, say - reloaded the roughly 19 GB of music and podcasts I had stored on it, instead of sitting here poking it, staring at it and wondering how in the hell I'm going to pass the time this afternoon.

Sweet Jesus, I may have to work.

Trash Talking

The gray skies reflected my mood perfectly; I wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep the day away. Unfortunately, the world still revolves despite my wishes otherwise, and so I had to emerge into it.

At the top of my errand list: the library. Generally, the library cheers me up - all those books, all those words, knowledge and characters hidden away, waiting to be discovered usually causes my heart to grow a size or two.

Why was I in such a funk? I couldn't say; the holidays were rushing up ever closer, and the fact that it was Sunday meant the weekend was drawing to it's inevitable close and the thought of a full week of work just made me want to curl up in a ball.

So there but for the grace of God I went, and of course I arrived ten minutes too early. So there I stood with about 20 other bibiophiles, students and wayward souls.

As I leaned against a pillar thumbing through a book, the voices rang out nearby:

"Is this yours? Here, I think you dropped it."

"What the hell are you doing?" replied a second voice.

I looked up to see a tall, lanky middle-aged man who looked as if he were still living in the '60s - and couldn't be happier, standing next to a dark blue, beaten-up sedan. The driver of the sedan shouted out.

"Don't throw things in my car, man. What's your problem?" And he threw a scrap of paper out the window at the aging hippie.

The hippie, nonplussed, picked up the scrap, tossed it back into the car through the open window. "I don't have a problem; I don't like litterers."

The paper shot back out the window. "You throw that back in this car again and you'll be sorry!"

Back in the window. "There's a bank of trash cans just right there. Use them!"

Out the window, and followed by the driver's side door opening. A younger, thick guy around my age stood up. He was wearing a shirt the same color his car once was and a deep scowl on his face. "Stop messing with my property, man!"

The hippie pointed to the ground. "This is your property too! I'm tired of people messing with my property! Why aren't you?"

The guy stomped around to the hippie and stood in his face. "I don't like litterers either, but I don't like you messing with my stuff."

"I'm just cleaning up after you."

At this point, a third man enters the scuffle. "Good Lord! Here -- I'll pick it up. Why are you acting like this? There's kids around! Just pick it up and let it go!"

He stepped between them and picked up the offending scrap and carried it to a trash can.

At this point, the car owner began appealing/attacking the crowd. "I don't like litterers either, but this is wrong. I'm going to have security ban you and you from the library!" he said this while pointing at the hippie and the samaritan.

People started giggling and rolling their eyes. "The holidays must be getting closer," a woman muttered - loud enough for everyone to hear.

"I don't like trash and litterers either! Why don't you just mind your own business?" the car owner stared whining.

The doors opened and he stormed into the library. Everyone else followed.

Throughout all this, I stood there, leaning against my pillar, trying not to laugh at the utter ridiculousness of the situation. I might have tried to stop the fight had it happened, but I didn't feel any need to get involved otherwise.

However, something cheered me about the exchange. Maybe it was the triumph of the rational people over the goofy litterer. Maybe it was the way the hippie handled the situation. Or maybe it was the fact that I wasn't the only one the holidays were apparently getting to.

In short, I think it helps to know that nothing helps a foul mood to know that there's always someone grouchier and moodier than you.

Or maybe I don't like litterers.

I followed the crowd into the library, took care of business and moved on with the beginnings of a smile on my face.

Goodbye Trudy

You were a great dog; I miss you already.

Only the Strong Survive

Your results:
You are Apocalypse

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.


Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...

Choices

The situation finally came to a head two weeks before Christmas. Trudy, while always a little shaky on the housebreaking thing, was treating the house like her own personal commode. When you fear to tread inside your own house without shoes, it's time to do something.

So I packed her up on a rainy Monday evening, where the vet told me I had a few options remaining:

• Running MRIs, CTs and other mega-expensive tests on her so they might - might - be able to determine what's wrong. This doesn't mean a cure - just an explanation.
• Try giving her new drugs, which if history is any indication, would only help for a few months at the outside.
  
• Grin and bear it.
  
• Have Trudy put down, because she's nearly 15 and this situation is not going to get better.
  

Realistically, it's what I expected to hear, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with.

I can't really afford to run the tests on her, and really, they'd be useless; I know what's "wrong" with her - she's old. At times, she stares off into space for several minutes at a stretch, and she goes through stretches when she acts completely confused by the world around her. It's during these stretches that my dining room, sunroom and landing become minefields.

Giving her the new drugs is simply putting off the inevitable. See the whole "nearly 15" thing.

Grinning and bearing it is becoming less of an option. Darcy is moving in this Spring, and it's not fair to her to have to put up with this. Nor is it fair to me or Trudy; I have to take the time to clean the floors, and I can't help but feeling like it's a little unusual to spend several minutes after work every day trying to figure out where she relieved herself in the house.

So there we are. I could have done it then and there, but I didn't want to have her put down going into the holidays. (Of course, as we stood in the parking lot as rain soaked us through and she refused to get into the car, I wondered how the vet would react to me dragging her back in and saying "it's time!" I held off.)

The hell of it is that she's been great the last week, but we go through this - she'll be great for several days or a couple of weeks and then she follows up with two weeks of constant crapping. And the bad days are starting to outnumber the good ones.

I'm going to miss my little friend. Over the past two-plus years, she's alternated between complete pain in the ass and the best friend I could want. But she's always been good-natured, very sweet and protective. At this point, I've been trying to make her last week as enjoyable as possible.

I called and made the appointment for Monday; I'll leave work early, pick Trudy up, take her to the park for the afternoon, then we'll say goodbye.

A Good Ocean View Can't Be Beat

What do you say?

We all put some money together and purchase a sovereign nation. I like it!

Oooh! Oooh! I want to be emperor!

There's First Love, and There's Brian Love

Possibly the greatest time-waster in the history of humankind.

Engagement Party

"You look like the perfect couple. How you doin'?"

Yellow is a relaxing color, or maybe it's blue. I wasn't too sure. The maroon chairs offered a nice contrast. Plus, they were the most uncomfortable chairs I can remember sitting in for some time. And it's kind of ironic if you think about it. They want you to wait in these chairs. You're supposed to sit in them for a long time. Wouldn't it make more sense if they were easier on your posterior?

"Man, I was shouting 'Yaaaa! AAAAAH!' They had to hold me down."

Darryl was still talking. To us, to everyone around us. People were nodding, trying to be polite. I was trying to figure out exactly how we'd landed in Hell's Waiting Room. But, I realized, that was an inapt analogy. We weren't in Hell's Waiting Room -- we were in Hell itself.

He'd sat down across from us earlier, carrying what looked like a clear plastic cornucopia of gauze and pharmaceuticals. Out in the lobby, a weathered and angry looking old man kept doing laps in his wheelchair and barking at the receptionist from time to time.

"They took one of those sticks, you know - with the cotton on the end - and had it in my stomach. They was rooting around trying to find the pus."

Welcome to the ER Waiting Room on Thursday night.

Welcome to my engagement party.

The day began ordinarily enough - a sunny yet cool start to winter. I followed the routine to the letter: wake, shower, walk dog, eat and head to work. But this day wasn't going to be ordinary; it was going to be special. It was The Day.

Work passed in something of a fog. Basically, I was more useless than usual. Despite my best efforts, I may have actually accomplished something, but it's entirely possible I dreamed that part of it up. I was excited to get through the day. Ready to hit the kitchen to start cooking. I had an exciting menu lined up, great ingredients and new knives. Oh, and there was that whole ring thing too.

I left the office early, met a friend for lunch and hit the gym for a quick workout. Upon returning home, it was time to start cooking.

After a little goofing off, it was time to get my cook on. I started getting my mise into place - using my new chef's knife, I minced garlic, chopped apricots, sliced scallions, trimmed french beans and julienned carrots. It was fun having a really sharp knife to work with, and things were coming together nicely. Cooking relaxes me; I wasn't sweating bullets or fretting. Everything worked according to plan.

One hour out, I browned the lamb, spread the mustard, garlic and bread crumbs to it, and dropped it in the oven. The couscous was soaking up the chicken stock. The table was set, the wine chilled and the ring concealed somewhere handy. Darcy walked in from work as dinner hit the table.

After dinner, I swallowed hard, pulled the ring from it's hiding spot and asked the question.

OK - she said yes.

As Darcy was calling her friends and family, I decided to finish straightening up the kitchen. I scraped the plates, scrubbed the pans and picked up the knife and wiped it down with the sponge. And I was amazed when it cut through the sponge. Wow, I thought - be careful with this - it could hurt. A lot.

I was putting the knife in the dish drainer when it slipped out of my hand.

Darcy knew there was a problem when I shouted a few choice words. One of them starts with "M" and rhymes with otherfucker. We bandaged up the finger.

And bandaged it again after blood soaked through it.

And again.

Two hours and my finger was still bleeding. That's a bad sign. I may not be a doctor, but I hear that when blood seeps out of you for a couple of hours, you may have a problem. So we hit the emergency room -- just in time for their fast track service for minor injuries to close.

So we waited. And met Darryl, who I later saw passed out in the center of the quieter waiting room. Security was getting ready to remove him to somewhere.

We waited some more. And watched the impromptu family reunion as four generations of the James family gathered to find out more about their grandmother who had a stroke. Angry wheelchair man continued stalking the waiting room. I'd lost count, but I think he was nearing his 200th lap. Apparently, this rendered him effectively invisible to the hospital staff, because no matter what he said or did, they just looked past him and moved on to the next person.

More waiting. Darcy nodded off in the seat next to me as Jerry Seinfeld became Hank Hill became the news became Bernie Mac. And still we waited. Finally they took me in for treatment, and decided not to do anything with it other than put the finger in a gauze splint for a day or two - something we could have picked up at Walgreens.

Deep down, I think I was jealous that Darcy got to wear something on her finger but I didn't - well now we were even. While she got to bear a sparkling diamond on her ring finger, I got to wear a sheath of gauze over my middle finger. And I'll get a cool scar. Maybe.

So there you have it. Some people celebrate their engagement by spending time quietly with one another. Others surround themselves with friends and family. Me? I eschew such conventionalities. Give me posture-busting plastic chairs and human misery any day.

Welcome to the family Darcy. Wait 'til you see what I have planned for our wedding day . . .

Apparently, the Axe Handle Wasn't Available

Man attacks another man with antlers in a road rage incident.

I know of people who carry blackjacks, bats, heavy flashlights and even guns in their cars in case they meet some maniac some day. But carrying antlers? I'm all for self-defense, but antlers?

And how exactly does one deal with an antler-wielding attacker?

Pilgrimage

When I started dating Darcy, little did I know that every year, if we had the means, we were obligated to make a pilgrimage. So on a cold December morning, we piled into the car, faced east, and began our odyssey.

We crossed the river without incident, and as the strip malls gave away to farms, churches and intermittent houses, I finally broke down and asked, "Where the hell are we? I don't remember any of this from last year."

"We're almost there," she said. And, on cue, Millstadt loomed ahead of us. We made the appropriate turns and were soon at our destination -- the tree farm. Hundreds of acres of green, living trees, all eagerly awaiting some saw-wielding maniac to cut them down, drag them across town and into his living room - where the tree gets revenge by filling the air with enough pollen to make flowers quiver in anticipation.

Upon reflection, I realized why I didn't recognize where we were -- I was distracted last year. But this year, I was prepared. The night before, I borrowed my mother's minivan. If we were going to act like suburbanites, then by God, we were going to look the part!

The minivan fit in nicely with all the few pickup trucks and other vans that dotted the lot; we grabbed a saw from the counter and piled into a van with a family of four and off we went to the trees.

Climbing out of the van, the driver warned us: "Do all the cutting you want before you hand the tree off. We will not cut it for you back there. Y'all understand?" Satisfied with the nods and grunts, he released us into the wild.

The flashbacks started shortly thereafter. "How about this one?" "No." "That one?" "No. It has a bald spot."

"The needles are dying."

"It's not tall enough."

"It's not wide enough."

It became apparent to me that Darcy and my father would have been kindred spirits, and that's a wonderful thing. I now accept the fact that I shall never truly understand the mind of a tree aficionado. But next year, I'm bringing the hand and foot warmers.

Back at the front of the lot, after they wrapped the tree, one of the workers asked if we wanted help taking it out to our car. I bit back the "Where the fuck were you last year?" that almost sprung out of my mouth. It's good to see the filters still work.

I lugged the tree to the van and heaved it into the back. We were off to my house, where the tree would be residing this year.

Despite a small list to the left, the tree fit perfectly in the corner of the living room. I popped Superman Returns (re-review coming soon) into the DVD player - good Christmas-tree-decorating movies are vital to the operation, and got my decorate on.

Tree decorating is not something I come by naturally. Generally, I just look at a tree and say "Perfect! Just as God wanted it!" However, I freely admit that I could be a little hazy on God's plan, so I obeyed the decorating master and began putting ornaments on the tree. I began worrying that the tree was full, but my folly was pointed out to me; apparently, I am not yet ready to snatch the ornament from the master's hand.

And I'll be damned if we didn't hang that last box full of ornaments onto this (admittedly huge) tree.

So now the tree is decorated, and we're all ready for the holidays. I might complain about lugging the tree across town and into the house, but at night, when the twinkling lights cast a calming spell over the room, I'm willing to admit it's worth the effort.

But don't worry; I'm still going to complain about it next year.

Reasonable Doubt

Woman shoots husband over a warm beer.

After reading this I have to wonder: was it because the beer was warm, because it was Stag, or because it was warm Stag? It sounds to me like he was asking for trouble.

From the Ashes

Fascinating account, censored until now, of how the Pacific fleet was rebuilt after the attacks at Pearl Harbor.

Missouri DOR Can Lick My Balls

Copy of the e-mail I just sent to the state of Missouri:

I just spent more than 30 mintues in line only to be told that I could not renew my plates today. Why? Because apparently, I did not have my 2004 personal property tax receipts. That's funny -- and utter crap, because I did have it with me.

It seems that back in 2004 when I purchased my car, I was leasing a Honda Civic. As part of my lease, I had to pay the personal property taxes, which I did. My name is even on the property tax form as a c/o.

When I registered my car, they accepted it without any trouble. So EXACTLY WHY DID THEY NOT ACCEPT IT NOW?

Please answer this for me, because I really want to know. I don't understand how two years ago, they accepted this paperwork without any problems, but now it's a problem. The state didn't have any trouble cashing the check back in 2004, 2003, or 2002. I paid it. I have the receipts, which according to some arcane bureacratic rule, I can't use.

So now I have to go to another office to get a waiver, when in this golden year of 2006 AD, we have these things called computers that talk to one another via this magical invention known as the internet. In fact, I'm using it to communicate with you now! How hard is it to set the systems up so the ("extremely") helpful employee can go ahead and look the damned thing up, thereby taking care of the problem? I'm willing to be that an integrated system would save all sorts of time and money, which is probably why the state rejects that solution. Please explain this me, because I'm utterly confused about this.

But mostly, I'd like to know why is it that I can use a valid tax receipt showing I paid my property tax in 2004 is no longer valid. That doesn't make a lick of sense and right now, I'm so angry that my hands are still shaking. Because Monday, I now have to take time off of work, drive downtown and get a piece of paper (that they probably won't have - because I already paid my taxes) that merely repeats information that I already gave them. Please explain to me how this makes sense.

This state never ceases to amaze me. In the roughly 18 years that I've been driving, I have never had an easy time getting my plates renewed - no matter how many times I check the paperwork I have or how early I start, some new rule keeps springing up that keeps me from taking care of it without jumping through so many hoops that circus monkeys start shaking their heads in wonder.

Thank you for your time. I'm not really expecting to hear from you, since I know what a premium the state puts on its customer service.

Sincerely,

Brian McCown

Christ, I am pissed. My hands are still shaking. Needless to say, I plan giving my amigos over at the Missouri Dept. of Revenue a friendly call on Monday so that we may discuss my issues with them. I'm going to try not to use the word "fuck" as many times as I did when I sat down to write this, but I'm not promising anything. In fact, I was kind of proud that I only dropped one f-bomb when I was told I couldn't renew my plates.

TSUNAMI!

Earthquakes rocked the Kurii islands this morning, and the Japanese government issued warnings. People were told to flee the expected tsunami.

So I'm sure they were a little confused when the 16-inch wave pounded the coast.

A co-worker told me that CNN devoted several segments of breathless coverage, waiting for the destructive tidal wave to hit the Japanese coast -- apparently one that you can avoid by either timing your jump just right or taking a big step at the right moment. Apparently, the anchor was rather distressed that we weren't going to see Japan or Hawaii erased from the map. Nice.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for weather warnings; I don't want to ever see a repeat of the 2004 earthquake; however, I'm thinking that maybe - the folks over at CNN might want to reign in the journalistic zeal a little bit. At least the guy on NPR sounded a little amused when he read about the 16 inches of terror that washed ashore this morning.

Cursed? I Think Not!

My fingers are numb; my tongue, even more so.

Several years ago, I burned myself badly while cooking. As a joke, my mother purchased me a set of oven mitts. As an even bigger joke, they might be able to hold out the heat from an ice cube, but a cookie sheet? Forget it.

Needless to say, when I was pulling the cookie sheet with the bread on it out of the oven, I burned the bejeesus out of two fingers. Not fun. Fortunately, I have much experience with this, so I immediately immersed them in water. A few minutes later, I was functional again.

Until I decided to try the spaghetti sauce. The spaghetti sauce that had been simmering in the slow cooker for several hours.

Perhaps I was overwhelmed by hunger. Maybe I was distracted; who knows? All I know are blisters on the roof of the mouth aren't much fun.

This is not the first time I've burned myself while cooking. Nor is it the first time I've cut myself, crushed a finger, banged my head off of something. Maybe it's clumsiness. Aaron thinks it's because he cursed me many years ago. I don't buy it. And I still laugh at him!!!!!

No, I think it's mainly because I subscribe to the extreme school of cooking, where no knife is too sharp or no pan is too hot. Like all great composers, I suffer for my art.

I just pray I live to enjoy it.