Here's to 2011

it's that time of the year: when facebook is cluttered with collages of your semi-friends' year's worth of statuses; when people make year-long promises about as ridiculous as the promises they make to their significant other; when people get drunk off half the amount of alcohol i drink regularly.

yep: new year's eve.

i have nothing particularly interesting to say about this holiday except that i like it and i hope none of you have been tom sawyered into working late tonight.

but sometimes it feels as though american holidays are a lot like american pharmaceuticals: only celebrating the good emotions and trying to ignore the bad altogether.

we have a holiday for love-- that'd be valentine's, sadly-- and we have one for happiness known as christmas or your birthday. halloween is for a mixture of being a slut, eating candy and partially for fear-based entertainment. we even have a prank holiday on april first. there are also the apology holidays-- the holidays that exist for those of us who hate christmas and valentines-- those are drunk-days like st. patricks and the fourth of july.

there are no holidays to glorify negative emotions just as there are only pills to get rid of negative emotions. anger and anxiety are diseases and they should not be a part of our holiday. i move we make an angry day-- it can be in june.

anyway, new year's is a weird one. we get drunk, or coked out, or trip balls, or whatever it is we do, like a lot of holidays-- but in so much excess. the cokeheads do meth and the alcoholics drink everclear. everyone tries harder to be worse. in a lot of ways, i feel like it's a very human way of trying to erase the idea of our own mortality.

the only thing more mortal than a birthday is new year's eve because it happens on the same day for everyone. and on that day we try to blank our minds with drugs and disco balls. we try to make so many mistakes that the most popular birthday in america falls exactly nine months afterward.

the worst part is the only logical part of our brains capable of comprehending the concept of our inevitable demise comes up with resolutions for the following year-- but we do it hammered. we get into drunken conversation about how we'll make sure the next year isn't as bad as the one we're leaving and then we shout ridiculous resolutions in our intoxicated, spitty, voice.

this year i will do fifty push-ups every day!

no you won't.

i mean you'll do it for like a week. and then you'll skip a day and your friends will give you shit and you'll say something about how they haven't held up their resolutions and have no right to judge. the way politicians win arguments, you know. and you'll do fewer and fewer push-ups till march, when you're doing none. maybe sometime in june, you'll think about your resolution and you'll do thirty push-ups one day. but then you'll give up and realize no one cares about your resolution anyway.

just as valentine's is a day for love and halloween is a day for fun-fear, new year's eve is a day for starting off the next annual with a glorious amount of excusable mistakes. and what an american way to begin.

here's my resolution-- one that i can promise:

i will poop my pants one time this year.

the most alarming part of that resolution is that you can't reasonably tell whether or not i'm saying i'll poop my pants because i never do, or if i'm saying i'll only do it once because i usually manage to do it fifteen times in a year.

but, both ways, that's a promise. it's bigger than a promise: it's a resolution.

2010.

I spent 2010 writing a novel. I think I'll spend 2011 editing the hell out of it, and 2012 crying when the first rejection letters start coming in.

Happy New Year's (Eve) everyone!

To the Visitor from Maryland

i believe you found this blog by accident, given your google search was aimed at "how to draw bacon"

it was probably because of this one post i wrote about the united states of america and the love of bacon. most people find me by trying to find bacon bikinis.

anyway, because all the bacon bikini searches actually do wind up leading them to pictures of bacon bikinis, i thought it fair i see if i could help you, too.

and, worse case scenario, you'll never see this post but someone else will find this during their quest for bacon-drawing lessons and the world will be a wonderful place full of mediocre drawings of bacon and hope.

if i were to write a book about drawing-- which i have little to no right to do-- i would preface the story with the importance of spatial reasoning and the possibility that doodlers are true geniuses. the ability to draw a doodle, or a cartoon, comes down to the understanding of what to leave in and what to leave out. it has much more to do with your mind than it does your hand or your fancy pen. that's where i call it genius.

so, how to draw bacon.

the first step-- highlighted below-- is to draw a somewhat ambiguous shape. preferably one that is less ambiguous and more bacon-like. if you're very bad at drawing, i suggest you try to draw a rectangle and you will likely come across something like the bacon-outline below anyhow.


boom. you have completed the hardest part in drawing a cartoon bacon.

the most important thing about the first step is that you're careful to make the lines seem as though you weren't very careful about them. it's kind of like dialogue during a first date in that way. if your bacon does not look a bit wavy, it won't look right.

continuing.


divide your bacon-shape into thirds-- hot dog style. or bacon style, i suppose. but just not hamburger style. what you're drawing is the fat.


step three is just adding color. and you can decide if you'd like the fat to be on the outside or inside-- that's up to you. you can also decide not to make your bacon as brown as mine-- but i like mine crispy.

just don't make your bacon black and white because it will look stupid and confused. people will see it and say, "wow, what a great drawing of a creepy smile with black lipstick!" or "why is your oreo all flimsy?"

but that's pretty much it. that is how you draw bacon.

if you'd like to anthropomorphize your bacon, you can add eyeballs wherever you please. you can even add a mouth. but don't add a nose-- that's just weird. bacons don't have noses even when they're cartoons. what to leave in and what to leave out.

i'm actually lightly convinced that drawing has little to do with hand-eye coordination and much more to do with understanding how to trick someone into seeing what you want them to see. my bacon has a total of six lines and two colors. but i'd like to believe that's all that's necessary. and it has nothing to do with whether or not i have very much control over my hand-- especially since bacon is inherently wiggly.

it's all just tricks.

check this out:


the beauty of cartoons is that anyone can draw them-- unlike classical art or portraits or still life or anything that is an "exact" replica of an item. in the world of cartoons it's just lines and tricks-- not hand-control.

and if you fuck it up, you can go ahead and call it your style.

i bet most of you are secretly upset that this post didn't end with some "GOTCHA!" moment or a cruel joke. my apologies for that.

NEXT WEEK: HOW TO EFFICIENTLY KILL PUPPIES WITH PUBIC HAIR WEAPONS!

Writing the First Novel Chapter

Source: Vickie Britton of Suite 101

The first chapter is usually the one that is rewritten the most. Here are some tips to help you get it right the first time.

The first chapter is the most important chapter in the book because it is the first sample of your writing your readers will see. It must have the power to draw them in and interest them in the rest of the book. The first chapter also determines the voice, tone, and atmosphere of the story.

Start with Conflict or a Point of Interest

While the first chapter doesn’t have to start with soap-opera drama, it must have enough action to interest the reader. Many writers choose to begin their story at a point of conflict such as at a place where the hero is in immediate danger. For example, the logical place to begin a mystery would be with the discovery of the body, not the detective commuting to work or reading the morning newspaper.

Providing Background Information

Many instructors habitually advise their students to throw away the first chapter. Should you? That depends. Many writers make the mistake of including far too much background information in the first chapter. This is because they are anxious to set the groundwork for the rest of novel. They want readers to know everything about their character from the start.

You need to start where the action begins, not with a lot of who, what and where explanation about your character and how he got in this mess. The first chapter should provide only the bare essentials of background information.

For example, it might be necessary for the reader to know where your hero lives, but not, at this point, where he went to school, how many kids he has, whether or not he gets along with his mother. These points can be introduced if and when they become pertinent to the story. Though additional information is necessary, it should not all be crowded into the first chapter. If there is too much explanation, most of it can be discarded, and what is essential should be threaded into to a later part of the book.

What Goes in the Middle

Now that you have gotten their interest, you must develop the first chapter by deepening the conflict. If you have started with a point of action, now is the time to bring into focus the details of the event, and the character’s reactions to the event.

End With a Question or Cliffhanger

Just as the first chapter begins with a bang, it should not end with a whimper. The final lines should pose a question that draws readers into the next chapter.

If your book is a mystery, have the detective discover an unusual lead or clue he plans to follow up on. If your story is a romance, cut the first chapter off at the point where the boy asks the girl for a date, not after the reader already knows her answer. If you are writing a thriller, stop the first chapter with the hero hanging on the ledge of the building, not after he has jumped to safety.

By the end of the first chapter the reader should

- be introduced to the main characters
- know where the story takes place
- have a feeling for the atmosphere of the book
- know the main problem or conflict
- experience some kind of mental or physical excitement

One More, This Time Smile

jim carrey once described his role in ace ventura: when nature calls as "imitating myself" and "looking backward" before promising to never act in another sequel. and while what some would call "toilet-humor" is also what those same some would probably not call "sound advice" i've played most of my employed life by those rules.

i did return to the independent pet shop once-- and jim carrey is debating about returning to a series of unfortunate events-- but for the most part, i don't see much use in repeating something you've done before unless it's leading you somewhere you've never been.

but about a week ago, travis [the original, not the current] and i went on a long-awaited photowalk and discussed random things including a 45 year-old man who felt young again by blasting songs about turning back time in his convertible porsche.

somewhere on that walk, we came across a limousine and i asked the driver to let me throw travis in the trunk for hostage pictures in hopes to get a few thousand dollars from his parents.

this would not have been the first time i took "hostage photos" of a friend.

gaby from 2002

in fact, if you've ever been with me in public longer than thirty minutes, you've likely heard me say, "hang on a second" in the middle of a long conversation only to run off to bother a stranger and see if i might be able to question their comfort zone. i think that's what i was doing.

but the driver was laid-back and easy to accept the idea of photographing travis in his trunk so long as his clients didn't notice. and so in went travis.


on our way off to wherever we might have been headed, the limo driver stopped us.

"hey, question," he shouted.

"what's up?" i turned back.

"i want to get a nice camera," he continued, "but i don't know how to use all these things. what should i get?"

i wanted to tell the man he was asking the advice of a former camera salesman and that he was in good hands, but i opted not to mention the detail because my advice might prove it anyhow. and if not, well shit, i should probably leave that fact aside.

i told him all about entry level dslrs and their prices and packages before showing him a few things on my own camera. i don't actually know if any of it made sense to him or if he'll remember me as much beyond the crazy-haired guy who locked a friend in the trunk of a limousine, but it was poetic in a way. it was one professional helping another.

the following day, i received a phone call from an unknown number and opted to ignore it as i was somewhere inside a pacific heights mansion after a hard night of drinking and nearly being arrested for urinating in the garden of said mansion. but the message that was left informed me that a photography shop was anxious to interview me.

it is truly a magical world, at times. it's not every day you avoid being sent to jail, sleep in a mansion, and get offered a new job.

accepting the job would go against one of the few rules i have in the working world and that's jim carrey's rule: don't do sequels. i've been a camera salesman before. but i've also mentioned before i take jobs i'm unqualified for in hopes to learn something new and the shoe store is, quite frankly, not cutting it. even with the time i worked at a liquor store and the time i was a zombie at a haunted house included, this has got to be one of the least mentally stimulating jobs i've ever had. so it is time for a change even if that change means something i've already done.

i suppose we'll see where the interview goes, but i would very much not mind being a camera salesman again. that was quite possibly my second favorite job ever. the zombie one is actually the first-- but come on.

what can i say: i miss when busy days meant lots of conversation and lots of cash, and the slow days meant making light-graffiti penises and giggling with co-workers.


besides, let's be honest: you were getting bored of my work as a shoe-lover anyway. let's shake it up like the cars said.

The Worst Writing Advice You've Ever Received?

1. Don't resolve things in your first book--that's what trilogies are for.

2. Don't introduce an obstacle until you're halfway through the book, otherwise the reader will lose interest.

3. "Said" is boring. Mix it up with a different verb every time you have dialogue.

4. You can never have too many adverbs.

5. One word, man. Prologue.

Sadly I've been told all of these with full sincerity. Now I'm curious, what atrocious crimes against good writing have you been told?

I'm Mostly Serious

i write more than i read and, classically, that is stupid. i never did say i was a writer-- i just write. i think if i were a writer, i might read more. what i hope to be, at best, is someone who has an interesting thought and enough grammatical know-how to put the idea online or on a piece of paper. i can't promise it will be well-written or colorfully explained, but i can promise you'll know what i mean. i'm not a writer any more than i'm not a comedian. i am, at best, a communicator. and sometimes i'm not even very good at that because the communicator's kryptonite tends to be purchasable at all corner stores and bars till 2am daily.

i'm getting off topic.

point is, i do occasionally read. actually, i read more than you might guess if you met me in person, but less than you'd expect if you met me online. both ways, i don't read often. but sooner than books, i'll read blogs. perhaps because i'm a member of the digital today, or perhaps because i'm invested in the characters writing the blog well before i've started reading. books require chapters to lure you in and blogs get you immediately.

in reading some of my favorites i realized that i most certainly am not a writer. previously, i had only never said i was a writer. but now, now i know i am not a writer.

i wish, one time, i could write a post as wistful and poetic as some of the others i've read. i wish i had something more to offer than "when shit's going down, laugh, cuz poop is funny."


i read one post in which the blogger was trying to wash a spider down the drain of her tub, but couldn't because the struggle she witnessed made her aware that she had never struggled for her life like a spider. again, i'm not a writer: she put it a lot better than i can. the point is, it was amazing. the last time i saw a spider and wrote about it, it was a story about how it was in my kitchen and i swatted it with the spatula and got mad at the squashed spider for causing me to get pasta sauce on the kitchen wall. look, don't flatter me. her story is better.

there's this weird battle, though. the same battle of being a tour guide. a lot of people would ask if there was a secret to getting more tips and there very well may be, but the way you get your tips is only something you can figure out for yourself as it relies on knowing what people think of you. but i would always tell people that the trick was to have one joke for every three facts. the idea behind that formula was that i was being asked for a formula and abstract thoughts were not wanted. that, and it's somewhat true. it doesn't matter how much you know if you're not making an audience laugh and keeping their attention. similarly, it doesn't matter how funny you are if you don't know shit about san francisco. one joke for every three facts. the best is one long fact that happens to be funny enough to feel like a joke but comes with the added amazement that it was not a joke.


so we come to our blogs. i don't even know what a blog is meant to be. a diary? a long real-time story? a rant-page? i have no idea. but after writing on the same blog for a while, you find what you need your blog to be. you discover why you're still writing on it. and, for me, that question returned: how funny do i need to be to keep the attention of an audience, and how much funny will it takes to ultimately ruin the intelligence of a blog?

ultimately, if i were able to reach the perfect balance, i could help a lot of people deal with chaos-- and perhaps even appreciate chaos.

i would love to write something that got someone when they needed it.

once, when i was walking home in san jose i felt like i was going to die. i had a shit day and it was a shit walk. but when i sat down to rest, i saw a car license that said "KP GOING" and i laughed. and kept going. it was precisely timed by the lords of chaos and i'm thankful for it. but i want to write a KP GOING license for someone. some of the other writers i've read have written such brilliant sentences that their stories practically feel like a KP GOING even when i don't need one. it's like an extra-credit push; a 1up. that's amazing because i can't even do it when the audience is desperate and upset. how on earth these other writers do it when i'm already happy is beyond me.

one of these days.

the whole point is this blog is now nearly two years old and i'm unsure if it's done much more than allowed people to live vicariously through my mistakes, or kill time at work. my hope is that somewhere there is someone who made it through a particularly rough struggle because of something i wrote here.

a struggle that was more than constipation.

intoxicated poop segment: part xcix

i will never grow tired of what happens as technology continues to grow faster than the human mind. if it weren't for the constant imbalance of digital maturity versus human maturity, we would miss out on delectable inventions like wonder-tonic's live feed of poop-related tweets.

though if i were to have a twitter account, i might just blow out wonder-tonic's servers in a single day.

i feel like there is a poop-pun that can be made here-- something to do with blowing out something and buttholes or something.

anyway, enjoy.

oh, also this:

Dear Widmer

i've been drinking a lot less than normal, and while that may mean i still drink daily i have managed to bring it below a six-pack each evening. the goal is to become a regular american-- joe six-pack, or whoever he was-- and to stop consuming bottles of whiskey like they were bottles of oxygen.

you've helped me a lot because your beers are embarrassingly light and because i was initially turned on to the witty phrases under each of your caps. "a prost to ____!" i even remember being excited that you used the word "prost" and not "cheers".


but it wasn't long before i started finding repeated prosts. the first duplicate i ever noticed was "a prost to arrested development" and it made me remember that i don't like that show nearly as much as everyone else. it also made me remember that it was impossible to expect your prosts to be infinite.

two sad truths at once.

then i found one that read, "a prost to lemoning your widmer" which was weird because it felt as though my beer was self-aware. like the time i had a fortune cookie that told me, "cookies will go stale, but fortunes are forever."

what really did it, though, was popping off a cap and finding "a prost to six-year bachelor's degrees" for the second time in one six-pack. it was particularly upsetting to find a repeat in one case, but something about the fact the word "six" was in the prost and in a six-pack seemed to accentuate the repeat and make the whole thing so much worse.

then, when i stopped to think, i realized a lot of your prosts were repeats. on the grand scheme, you must only have about thirty actual prosts. but of the thirty, a solid 60% of them mean the same thing. "a prost to the kid inside of us" is the same as "a prost to livin' the dream" is the same as "a prost to work not being work" is the same as "a prost to never giving up on a dream" is the same as "a prost to the broken halo in all of us".

all your prosts can be summed up with "a prost to sleeping in on saturdays"-- the words change slightly, but you're only saluting the idea of giving in to our own laziness and celebrating the fact it reminds us that we're still young enough to get away with it. cargo-free ships and six-year bachelor's and all that.

that would all be fine if i didn't get the exact same prosts so frequently. i mean, if you're going to use the same general messages and simply reword them, i don't see why there is a limit to how many ways you can do it or why i receive so many dupes. it's like that show, quantum leap with scott bakula: with such a boundary-free premise, there is no reason i should ever see him play elvis more than once.

look, i could talk smack all day-- some would argue i've been talking smack on my blog for two years straight-- but i'd rather help. besides, i think you guys are quite rad.

judging by the prosts i've found, it's safe to assume you're marketing your beer at someone between the ages of 25 and 35 who probably studies liberal arts or philosophy. you're aimed at the below-par everyman: the late-bloomer with a heart of silver. the guy who considers the fifth-- not the first-- of each month the day rent is due, but does still manage to have bills paid on time enough to look respectable. sometimes he forgets mother's day, but usually he makes up for it.


he's not a particularly bad or lazy guy-- after all, your six-packs are $11 and that's a world above buying a steel reserve forty for $2 and half the alcoholic content-- but he's got a few things he could work on.

anyway, this means you must have some form of censoring or ratings system involved in your prosts to keep the audience at a respectable level, or else we'd see things like "a prost to waking up to oral sex" or "a prost to a nice long dump."

they're also uni-sex, which means i can't suggest "a prost to shaving off only part of your facial hair just to see what you would look like with a mustache."

but with all of that in mind i've compiled a quick, somewhat pg, list of fifteen prosts you are welcome to use. and please definitely do. i'm sick of being the guy who throws his widmer cap on the ground while shouting "GOD. FUCKING STUPID!" and has to explain himself.

a prost:

to the triceratops, brontosaurus, and pluto still being included.

to extended dvds.

to high-fiving strangers.

to believing you're a superhero till an unreasonable age.

to bottomless mimosas.

to wearing costumes to the office.

to intentionally making people feel awkward.

to freeze-tag in the library.

to word-of-the-day calendars.

to pretending you just never got that text message.

to successfully building anything from ikea.

to teaching your parents the internet.

to sock-puppet shows.

to being let off with a warning.

to big companies listening to little people.

free-prostingly,
president wishnack

Coffee Condom

one of my roommates, travis, works at a cafe. in fact, he's worked in the coffee business since he was little. also, in fact, i've had roommates named travis since i was little. but, the point is, travis has ideas of coffee in the same way i have ideas of people named travis-- it just comes with the experience.

for instance, 100% of the travises i've lived with have had brown hair.

and, till recently, 100% of the coffee-drinkers travis has known have all referred to it as a "coffee sleeve."

naturally, hearing someone call it a "coffee jacket" threw his mind out of its comfort zone in the same way seeing a blonde travis might do mine. we had a pretty great conversation about which was the correct term for the little protective slip of corrugated cardboard and, ultimately, travis was sticking with "sleeve."

i suppose the truth lies within whether or not the coffee cup itself is a torso or an arm-- it's personified no doubt, but there isn't a lot saying in what way. if the cup is a torso, the cardboard is a jacket. but if the cup is an arm, the cardboard is a sleeve. so the real debate becomes what part of the body we've declared a coffee cup.

i like to imagine the cup as a torso because it makes it easier to also imagine the cup talking to me about stocks and other business-related things.


also, i'm probably a lot less invested in the name of the cardboard piece-- which makes it easier to imagine talking coffee cups-- whereas travis has to hear both terms being thrown about every day and probably would like to hear that it's really called one or the other. preferably the coffee sleeve.

well, courtesy of the internet, i've been able to research much more than just which animals orgasm the fastest and whether or not bears can run downhill (they can, don't try to outrun one unless you're with a slow friend that you never really considered a friend anyway).

according to my research (wikipedia and that's all), the sleeve or jacket was invented in 1993 and was originally named the "java jacket" courtesy of one jay sorensen. sorry, travis. it's really called a jacket.

wikipedia does go to say that it can be called a coffee sleeve, hot cup jacket, coffee clutch, and even a cup holder so long as you are sure to mention that this is not a cup holder that is fixed in one position like those in a car or a movie theatre. so i suppose anything is correct if it's logical enough.

on a side note, the movie made of honor (yes made, and not maid) has a scene in which one character invents the java jacket but calls it the "coffee collar". in my mind, that is actually more accurate than the jacket or sleeve because both a jacket and a sleeve are designed to keep the wearer warm-- but a coffee jacket or a coffee sleeve are designed to do the opposite. while a collar doesn't necessarily protect someone's hands from burning when they try to carry you by the neck, it's still a little closer to the coffee purpose. especially since dog and cat collars hold a lot of descriptive information the same way coffee collars do-- if we're calling them collars.

you know, i'm going to stop typing this post. i'm not sure what the point was originally-- just that it was once called a "java jacket" and that ends the debate. the rest of whatever it is i wrote is probably only result of having it's a grind's "high octane" coffee.

the end.

Drugs, Jackets, and a Sentence About Bears

i once went to a tuxedo shop for an interview wearing that over-sized lumberjack jacket, a purple dress shirt, gold neck-tie, and pin-stripe olive green pants. and snow boots that i'd gotten in idaho shortly after escaping the police officers in san jose.

see, the run-in was just after declaring one of the lumberjack pockets the "chronicles of narnia" pocket on account of its hole. the hole lead to the lining of the jacket. and it was just before my flight to idaho.


it was also the first time i realized the benefit of being honest with a cop.

we'd been pulled over by the san jose crimefighters because of an illegal u-turn and they noticed a small pipe in the door of the car. that pipe was decorative and from new mexico-- it couldn't have been used to smoke anything. there was, for the record, a six inch switchblade which was illegal for three reasons: switchblades are illegal in california, blades longer than your palm are illegal as well, and that particular blade was used for scraping opium into a weed pipe.

but the cop never found that switchblade. it was the decorative pipe that he saw and it was the decorative pipe that allowed him to search the five of us.

i had several reasons why being searched was a horrible activity.

1. i was the only one who had weed.

- 1 gram in my left leg's pocket.
- 6 individually bagged grams in a tape cassette case inside my lumberjack chest pocket.

2. i also had an eighth of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the lining of my jacket, via the chronicles of narnia pocket.

3. i had to catch a flight to idaho the next morning to visit my sister and the rest of our family.

4. i had a $3,000 warrant out for my arrest.

when the cop asked if i had anything i might want to turn forward before being searched i handed him my tape cassette of marijuana. there was no way a frisking would miss that. and i think he respected my honesty because the frisk that followed was rather lazily done.

he noticed my pants pockets were full and asked what was inside. i pulled out my cell phone and $240 in cash, but left the gram of weed inside. and while there was a small part of me that felt proud to successfully hide one gram of marijuana, a larger part was afraid the officer might be able to put together what the six individually bagged grams, $240 cash, and a cell phone might have been involved in.


but the cop didn't question it. all he did was ask me if i had anything else on me before moving to the other passengers. i remember the feeling being roughly as scary as the time i saw a bear outside of the zoo. i definitely still had an eighth of mushrooms on me and possession of a hallucinogen is quite a bit more serious than possession, or even intent to sell, marijuana.

but the chronicles of narnia pocket saved me. the cop thought my jacket pockets were empty and the mushrooms went undetected.

when i was called to the cop car for further discussion, i told the officer i was aware i had a $3,000 warrant and that he had to arrest me but asked that he kindly did not. i told him that i had a flight to catch in the morning and that the flight was to see my sister in rehab. i told him our family was having a very rough time and that i was three months from moving to college in hopes to fix everything i could. this was the first time i had told any cop a story that was 100% true. usually my stories would involve diarrhea, or the phrase "social experiment" and hardly worked. but this time i was honest.

and the cop didn't arrest me.

in fact, he even wrote me a new court date so that my warrant and my new possession of marijuana would be cleared on the same date in one simple hearing. then he wished me good luck with my family. i think i mumbled, "to serve and protect" to myself as i stumbled out of his car.

if you have never been close to shitting your pants, a good way to experience that dangerous sensation is to find yourself selling weed and mushrooms with a warrant while sitting in a cop car trying to convince him that going to jail just won't work well with your schedule.

and getting away is like an orgasm.

all of these things went through my mind while i was at the tuxedo interview. i had worn the jacket mostly because i had no other jacket, but also because i thought it might show i had a unique sense of style. if i was trying to sell tuxedos, i was going to need to look like i had an eye for fashion. unfortunately my getup made me look like a combination of a homeless man and a evangelical priest.

either way, i found myself standing on a desk trying to sell the boss a black bic ballpoint pen upon request. his thought was that if i could sell the pen, i could sell anything. and that i should stand on the desk while selling because i reminded him of elvis.

i tried to focus on its sleekness and monochromatic simplicity. i mentioned its recognizable brand name and familiar style.

but the whole thing was stupid.

i wanted to tell the boss that i was selling weed and mushrooms, and that while those goods may be somewhat inelastic and require no standard salesman, i still had learned a fair amount of how to talk confidently and up-sell customers.

but it's hard to convince yourself into talking about drug-dealing at your first interview.

i didn't get the job, in the end. but i don't know if it's because i failed the interview or because the boss was arrested a week later.

evidently, he was selling cocaine and coked out the majority of his days. there's even a good chance he didn't remember interviewing me at all. both ways, he was arrested for selling coke and i was not hired at the tuxedo shop.

in hindsight, telling him i sold mushrooms and weed might have been an excellent way to get the job.

but in a different kind of hindsight, i'm pretty glad i never got that job.

Quotables

By abandoning the idea that an intelligent designer created us, we can wake with each dawn and say, "What's done is done. Now how can I make the best of the here and now?" Life is never static. Despite catastrophic tragedies, life has persisted in evolving new varieties of unimaginable forms. I find comfort in the narrative of evolutionary history. When I create, I feel that I am a participant in the grand pageant of life, a part of the ongoing creative engine of the universe. I don't know if that feeling is enough to replace the solace of religion in the lives of most people, but it is for me.

- Greg Graffin

Kindle to Sell More than 8 Million Units this Year

Impressive!

Christmas. Why Should I Care?

I know what you're thinking...shutup, I do TOO! You can't prove otherwise. You're thinking, "Oh, here comes another diatribe about the merits of Christmas, or why it's too commercial, or Techboy couldn't think of anything else to write about". Ok, I admit there is some of column A and some of Column B...and a lot of column C, but I'm going to contend that you are all wrong.

I should interject here that today, as of this posting, is President's birthday and that you should all wish him a "Merry Birthday" or " Season's Birthday" or some other mash-up. He just LOOOOOVES that! Make it a game and try to come up with one he hasn't heard before.

So, yes, I am annoyed at the level of commercialism foisted upon the holidays. Of course, as a kid, I longed for the Sears Wishbook to be published and sent out (yes, back then catalogs had to be printed. There was no "online".) or for my Aunt to pick one up since there wasn't a Sears near my home. I would pour over it looking at the latest toy line-ups and wishing I could get everything on the "boys" pages...although the EasyBake oven in the "girls" section always looked tempting, but mainly because I like cupcakes. As a kid, you see Christmas through the unjaded eyes of youth where you hope Santa brings you the cool thing you saw in the toy-store rather than the tired eyes of an adult seeing the line you will have to come back and stand in to buy that special toy to put under the tree. I'm not alone in my frustrations either.

Going through that transition can be pretty hard, and I can remember clearly the events that started to warp my perceptions into the cold, hard reality of adulthood. I learned the hard way, as a kid, that Santa can be an asshole, when my cousin got everything on MY list, and I only got a couple. It didn't take long to make the connection between his parents being more affluent than my single Mom, and the uneven toy bounty under the tree. Sie la vie. It wasn't like I was living the life of Tiny Tim or anything. I did ok at Christmas, but I thought Santa was being unfairly biased.

The next eye-opening occurrence was a few years later. By this time, I was already at the age (8-12?) when I was beginning to question my belief in mythical philanthropists. Ironically, this event also involved the same cousin and a number of other family members. Ask anyone and they will probably confirm that I can be strangely observant of the least likely things to be observed. In this case, I noticed that as everyone was shuffled upstairs to the living room to hang out around the tree, one man that I didn't know (presumably a family friend) appeared to be quietly making his way back down to the basement rec room. Suspicious, I thought. About fifteen minutes later, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but Santa Claus tromping through the snow up to the sliding, glass door of the living room. Apparently my adolescent mind could not rationalize a personal visit from St. Nick himself. Shouldn't he be getting ready to drop presents around the world?! At some point I decided to innocently ask one of my Aunts where the mysterious family friend had gone...."perhaps I should go downstairs and check?" I asked. "No, no, there is nobody down there now. Go see what Santa brought you.". I didn't buy that bluff for a second. My young, quizzical, fact-retaining mind had remembered that there was a cleverly disguised fire-escape in the basement. I remembered this mainly because I had always hoped to sneak into it and climb outside. I connected the dots and quickly reasoned that the Santa in the living room, was indeed the missing family friend. It was a very 'Sherlock Holmes' moment for me. I was quite proud of my deduction, but at the same time I also realized a wave of disappointment began to wash over me. "So the adults want me to believe THIS is Santa Claus? Has Santa always been a counterfeit?! IS THAT WHY I DIDN'T GET ALL THE STUFF ON MY LIST?!!" (yes, I do have a problem with letting things go).

WTF?!

It all pretty much fell apart from there. Now I see the holiday through jaded Adult-vision™, where I mostly see the chaos that the holiday creates. The crazy mall parking pile-ups, frazzled shoppers, delayed or cancelled flights, and the decorations that have lost their luster, due mainly to the fact that they have been up since OCTOBER! I used to like it when the city decorations went up, and Christmas music started playing. It seemed to change the aire around everything. Now it makes me cringe because I have grown tired of all of it before December even gets started. What feeling of holiday magic I tried to hold onto has pretty much been beaten and stomped and bloodied by the rushing of the commercial bulldozer trying to ram holiday products and fake cheer down your throat. Maybe I didn't see it before but wasn't there a time when the gifts, toys, and music were there to signal the holiday and to make it special? Now Christmas only feels like a two month long Black Friday sales promotion. Christmas in no longer the "season to be jolly" but "the season to find great bargains!". Stores don't decorate to celebrate, but to signal the latest stock of Christmassy items are in, which is why they start so early, to lengthen the "Christmas" shopping period. Ugh. Seriously, we as a culture are pathetic.

No comment.

To top it off, many of my favorite family traditions are gone, since most of the family are gone, or at least the many of the ones I associate with holiday gatherings. The Matriarchs and Patriarchs all seem to be gone and nobody seems to take the lead at getting people together. Also, if my family is any sign, people seem like they'd generally rather be somewhere else, especially the younger ones who spend most of the time texting or ignoring everyone. I love technology, but it seems to have bred a growing apathy toward togetherness. And everyone is always exhausted because it is the mandate of parents these days to enroll every kid in 20 different activities such as Christmas plays, winter lacrosse, or whatever trendy 6 year old do these days. Whatever. I bet the next generation won't even care that the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer is on Blu-ray. I don't know, something just isn't there anymore. do I need kids to appreciate Christmas now? I can't tell if people with kids are having more fun or not.

At least Clark tried!

Well, I'm off to enjoy Christmas the only way I know how anymore...imbibing massive amounts of alcohol. The Elves are paging me to get my ass to the store and pick up some more booze and head over to their place. Maybe if one of the girl elves gets drunk enough, I'll have a Merry Christmas after all.

I really wanted to come up with a good double-entendre for that but fuck it...which ironically is what I'm hoping to do.

Harry Potter 7.0

I'm heading with my girlfriend to see the first half of Deathly Hallows tonight. Will we be disappointed or impressed?

I Will Say this About Crepes

there is a number of times and frequency in which one may ingest a dessert before said dessert loses its magic. fact.

and i think i may have had crepes the perfect amount of times, with the perfect amount of spacing, that it remains as magical every single time. even once, after a wretched break up, i had a nice warm coffee with a wondrous strawberry nutella crepe. that crepe cured my mind the same way other crepes have cured my hangovers.

i probably eat crepes as often as i eat magical mushrooms-- which is often for mushrooms and somewhat rarely for crepes-- but with both items, i forget exactly what they're like till i'm deeply involved in the experience.


my favorite part of crepes is that they always ask you, "would you like whip cream on the side, or ice cream?"

whip cream or ice cream?

questions like that ought to be illegal they're so fantastic.

that's like asking, "do you want something awesome, or would you like a different form of awesome today?"

ice cream, please.

i'm sorry, ricky bobby, i'm sorry. while the right 'merican apple pie can feel like a very necessary hug from a long-lost friend, a crepe isn't about comfort: it's about bliss. in fact, the only reason i am not currently eating a crepe is because i've had one recently and don't want to ruin the magic.

that and i just had dinner and there is too much salmon in my stomach for even a thin french pancake.

but i'm tempted to try anyway now that it's on topic.

and that is what i say about crepes.

the end.

intoxicated poop segment: part xcviii

for those of you bored, and unaware of google's ngram viewer, i am about to make your day in the office at least 12% more interesting. i've done the math.

essentially, anyone can search google's database of books to find how often a word shows up throughout time. any word.


what did you think i was going to pick?

what's interesting is that from 1800-2000, the word "turd" is hardly used. i had thought it might be the popular and more scientific alternative to using the word "poop" but evidently not. "poop" on the other hand, seems to have peaked sometime between the great depression and the nazis-- and then it quickly disappears.

poop does look like it's trying to make a comeback-- and with any luck, i'll be able to help.

i did take the liberty of expanding the time-frame and starting our findings in the 1600's, too. the results mostly confused me.


it seems like there were decades during that century that "poop" was not discussed at all. and other decades when poop was mentioned so frequently that i wonder what else authors were even writing about. furthermore, "turd" takes the cake during the 1600's at almost double the power of "poop"-- which is neat-- though, it also has the same up-and-down behavior that "poop" did.

anyway, i thought i would share this slice of scatological sociology-- especially because reading this post at an office job probably has your bosses thinking you are reading something entirely different and much more important than the usage-history of the word "poop" and "turd".

oh, graphs, you're even better than opening a game of solitaire to pretend i'm not looking at porn.

The Secret Employee

like a secret shopper, except not.

while the secret shopper is designed to watch employees, the secret employee would be doing something like that to the boss.

let me explain.

it is unethical for a bartender to leave their drawer open between transactions because it makes money very easy to steal-- particularly if you're behind the counter. i was hired as a secret shopper once to watch some of the bartenders at swank, and the majority of the info i was meant to retrieve was unrelated to the overall enjoyment of the bar and focused mostly on whether or not the bartenders were stealing from the register.

everybody knows stealing is not something you should do while at work, but most people have tried at one point or another. so, in comes the secret shopper, writing notes and tattling.

well, this is great. but what about the other end of the deal? an unfortunate number of employees are only aware of what they're not allowed to do but they have little knowledge of what their employer is not allowed to do. and those who know the rules and regulations, can often times be too afraid to stand up to the boss and say so.

that is a dangerous thing-- especially during a time when everyone is so fearful of losing their job. the very fact companies hire secret shoppers to watch their employees, but the employees have no secret spy to watch the bosses proves business has a horrific upper-hand.

it's scary how few workers at the shoe store are actually aware of their break-related rights as an employee and i think this is probably true for most retail jobs. and retail is where most people start in the employed world-- no boss should ever get away with taking advantage of what naive employees they've nabbed.


all i'm saying is we need to even out the playing grounds and create the secret employee: someone who will stand up and say, "i haven't had a lunch in seven hours and this is not legal." someone to do it so the rest of the employees don't have to.

the secret employee is not necessarily a narc-- just there as a normal employee, generally making sure the boss is doing what they should be doing in the same way a secret shopper does an employee.

fair is fair.

it would be strange, though, if the secret shopper ever ran into the secret employee. i mean, if they do their jobs well, nothing would happen at all. but i feel like they might be able to sense each other as secret-eers.

‽aul

my apologies for the bad handwriting and carbon copy scribble-figures, i was a little rushed.

based off of a conversation between myself and techboy during which he was angry at the world and i was high.

All I Want for Christmas (Is a Flamethrower)

Pretty please baby Jesus/Santa/Rammstein?

The Four Commandments of Writing Good Sentences

I'm in the middle of reading Kill Shakespeare, but I thought that I'd take a quick break to share a new article I found on Writer's Digest with my readers. The article offers practical advice for sentence construction; something I found quite useful and intend to apply to my completed (yet very rough) manuscript when I begin edits in the new year. Hopefully others find it useful as well!

The Four Commandments of Writing Good Sentences

P.S. -- To my readers: I feel as though I've shared remarkably little about myself with you. In an effort to remedy this I'm going to do my part to not seem so withdrawn. So, as a starting point, is there anything you'd like to know about me--either professionally or personally--that you'd like me to write about for a future post?

P.P.S. A week until Christmas. Maybe I should start shopping?

intoxicated poop segment: part xcvii

poop is moving in new directions. while some places can't afford much more than pits for toilets, the rich are off somewhere debating about purchasing a $6,000 electric toilet so they won't have to waste their own time doing tedious things like lifting the lid or flushing.

amongst automatic flushing and motion-sensor lid-activation, inax's future toilet has a cornucopia of superfluous add-ons:

- heated toilet seat (with temperature control).
- LED lighting inside the toilet bowl to make sure you can see what's going down.
- hidden speakers play music designed to stimulate your brain in such a way that you will poop more efficiently (seriously).
- two different bidet nozzles-- both of which can be set to "massage mode" if you deem it necessary.
- plasmacluster ion technology automatically deodorizes the entire room after your poop.

the toilet even has a "sleep mode" to conserve energy during the time you're not pooping.

good times.

and somewhere else in the world, a lady is struggling to control her toilet paper-eating addiction.

... and other such addictions.

some days i feel so completely normal it almost makes me feel insane.

Mountain Dew White Out

this makes me miss focus groups.

Something About Stuff

according to new* studies, one in five divorces involve facebook.

how long is it going to be before psychologists finally update the DSM-IV? the very fact they have not altered their theories based on the extreme changes caused by the internet is one of the many things that gets them called a pseudoscience all the time.

"hey! let's all hang out at a cafe so we can get on our laptops and iphones and blackberries and text the friends that didn't come to see what they're up to rather than having a conversation with the people in front of us!"

am i the only one who feels slightly alarmed that this is considered normal and acceptable behavior?


once, when i was a little kid, my dad proved to me that i was lying by dipping my finger in a glass of water and then taking the water's temperature. i didn't think i was lying, but he had proof and i couldn't argue with that.

i wasn't lying and he was bullshitting a six year-old, but there was no way i could prove him wrong. and it wasn't about whether or not he was right-- it was about the fact he was my dad and he demanded respect as an authority figure.

nowadays, kids can yahoo answers the crap out of their parents' stories and come back and be like "wtf, mate?"

the internet, whether it's full of fact or fiction, has caused a break in the old school form of respect for our elders in that way.

back to facebook and relationships, though-- why can't you be in an "It's Complicated" relationship with more than one person? facebook won't allow it. wouldn't the fact it's complicated [enough to mention] indicate that there is more than one person involved? even if it's not implied, it certainly is a great possibility. i would expect that if facebook was negative-minded enough to list "It's Complicated" as a relationship option, they would be smart enough to allow us to be complicated with a few people.


that kind of puts the "oh, we're on and off" relationships to shame and makes you wonder what's so complicated about a relationship that only involves one other human.

i was talking with a forty-eight year-old woman who was very worried that she would have a difficult time reentering the dating scene. she'd been out of it for twenty-three years-- on account of her recently ended marriage-- and now has no idea where to start.

their divorce, for the record, was not one of the 20% caused by facebook.

"just know that people google you," i told her, "it's 2010. everyone googles everyone."

"that's where he found that picture of me!" she shouted, "i couldn't figure out how this new guy found that picture."

"i think digital today makes a lot of it harder," i said, "besides the fact everyone can go private investigator on you and find out all your best secrets before you have a chance to charm them with those secrets yourself, most people don't leave the house without something plugged into their ears. you can't even talk to someone on the street half the time."

one interesting thing the internet has altered is that older generations have a new respect for their youngins. i like talking with people double my age because i feel like we're trading information that couldn't be gotten on the internet with half the fun or success. and i don't care if it's fact or not-- it's opinion and it's interesting.

"you would like my daughter," she said.

i wasn't too sure where that came from, but figured maybe her daughter was also a fan of talking to strangers and felt cornered by how increasingly hard that continues to become.

"but you would have to like blondes," she continued, "do you go for blondes?"

"they tend to get me in trouble," i said.

that may not be exactly true, but if i were to name my least favorite ex-girlfriends... well, they're all blondes.

"she has a great ass, though," she told me as she fumbled for her blackberry, "let me see if i can find a picture."

i tried briefly to start her talking about her divorce again in hopes to get away from the opportunity to stare at her daughter's ass. but it didn't work.

"see," she showed me a low-angle shot of her daughter rock-climbing, "look at that ass!"

"yeah," i said, completely unaroused by the situation, "i should really climb more often."

"are you single?" she asked, ignoring my attempt to change the subject.

"well," i said,"it's complicated."

it's not. but that worked.

*may actually be old.

A Christmas Song Worth Listening To

Are you getting sick of the same dozen uninspiring Christmas songs played on loop for a month and a half? I know I am. And so, I'd like to share something that I think more suitably encompasses my feelings each and every Christmas season. Funny, witty and brilliant, I give you Tim Minchin.

For My Future Child

i'm not the oldest in my family, but i've always imagined it to be strange. the first child is witnessing parents learning to be parents, and they get what may be an experimental attempt very similar to a first-year teacher.

or, in the case that your parents are teachers, it's probably exactly like a first-year teacher.

either way, the first child is when expectations begin. by the third or fourth kid, there can't be too many surprises. though i may be entirely wrong there.

for my first kid, i'd like to tell them useful, life-related facts, that seemed to miss my ears growing up.

the problem is when we think of what we'll tell our children, we think of it all as a philosophy. we transform the question into, "how do i want my children to turn out?" which can't be answered and wasn't the question. there are things i could tell my kid in hopes to mold them into a certain type-- but that may or may not work and isn't the point.

there are certain things we need to tell our kids. these things are not about philosophy, and they're not about controlling someone's personality. they're just facts.

i would tell them one on certain birthdays.

on their third birthday: bees sting. if insects still exist in the future, and my kids like playing with them as much as i did, i'm going to need to let them know that bees sting. i don't remember being warned that this was something i might need to know as an amateur entomologist-- and if i was, it was certainly not made clear that bees can still sting you after they've died, or that bees will sting you if you touch them in any way, even if you weren't trying to capture it, and even if it was an accident.


then, maybe when the kid has grown a few years, i'd like to hit them with another juicy birthday-fact: there are brothers and sisters who are born on the same date, and look exactly the same-- right down to their god damn fingerprints-- they're called twins.

i don't know if i'm the only one who was never introduced to twins as a kid. i mean, at what logical time would a parent bring up a discussion of twins unless the kid had first seen a pair of twins? my first elementary school had no twins and therefore i had no reason to ask how they were possible, and my parents had no reason to concoct a colorful explanation.

i met a series of twins at my second elementary school in the fifth grade. and the only thing more bewildering than the concept of what seemed to be living clones, was that all twins had the same birthday. i couldn't imagine the coincidence or the magic necessary to pull off such a stunt. to be honest, i think i might have been scared.


i want to tell my kid before they see twins, because otherwise it is a horribly mind-blowing experience.

on their seventh birthday, i would want them to know a little bit about persimmons. this may not sound useful, but i did learn a few days ago that it is very useful. the fact is simple: persimmons shaped like tomatoes can be eaten raw, the ones shaped like acorns have to be cooked.


i'm tempted to say "try it." if you have never experienced eating the wrong type of persimmon. one bite felt like it had immediately dried my entire mouth of saliva, coated it with a thin sandy-paste, sucked my cheek-skin inward, and managed to taste bitter all at once. it was a horrible surprise-- like thinking you're about to drink a guinness and finding out it's actually a sam adams black.

sometime in my kid's early teen-life, i would like them to know something that no one ever told me. this is a life-changing piece of information so amazing i sometimes wonder if it was intentionally never told to me.

you don't have to separate your color laundry from your whites unless this is the first time you're washing the clothes.

some people will argue this and that about maintaining the integrity of the colored clothes, and how it is actually very important to separate the laundry loads-- but i don't envision a spawn of me and someone crazy enough to marry me growing up to be one of those people.

do you know how much better i became at doing laundry when i finally realized that clothes do not turn pink because of a red sock like they do in the movies? i mean, they can-- and i would definitely let my kid know this, too-- but only if the sock is new and has never been washed.

but somewhere later in my child's teenage life, they will inevitably want nothing to do with me and my trivia. so i don't think i need to plan out any special facts for those years yet.

and then on their eighteenth birthday, i'll tell them the last fact; the most important one:

you have super-powers.

not because i think they'll have super-powers, but because i think it could be good comedy if my eighteen year-old child believes it on even the smallest of levels. i'd like to see what happens next.


i think sometime around their twenty-third, or twenty-eighth, they'll come back and thank me. or argue with me-- which would be okay, too.

***

i absolutely hate what they did to the asterisk.

of the punctuation marks, it was arguably my child-life favorite and still would be if it weren't for my discovery of the interrobang or the change in meaning of the asterisk. it was my favorite because it seemed to have no clear meaning or purpose-- it was the last of a magical kind.

the asterisk was just a series of intersecting lines that resulted in a star-shaped glyph left to make sentences prettier if you didn't mind breaking some grammatical rules. the asterisk was the class clown of punctuation marks-- it followed just enough guidelines to be allowed to cause double the trouble.

in novels, sometimes, i'd find three asterisks strung together to symbolize a time-lapse, or to bookend a quasi-tangent thought. sometimes the chapter would reach a point in which the character went to sleep, three asterisks, then the next morning. it was like the three little stars stood for whatever that character was dreaming about. and it was still magical.

but now, oh now, the asterisk is added to the ends of catch-phrases and amazing italic words with the same semi-dishonest mentality of a happy face spider. now, the asterisks means "we're lying, and here's how!"

you come across these gym advertisements scattered with lovely words like "FREE!" or "COMPLIMENTARY" and they're always followed by their trustworthy friend, the asterisk. on the other side of the ad, at the very bottom, the asterisk is back to say, "BUT NOT REALLY FREE OR COMPLIMENTARY, ACTUALLY!"

i hate that they did this to my favorite punctuation mark.

somewhere in the nineties, there must've been so many lawsuits. i was probably busy making worlds in sandboxes or catching bees, while lawyers were arguing about how they could prevent mcdonalds for being sued for serving hot coffee to dumb patrons. or how plastic bags, things smaller than six inches, or anything fun, might best be presented as a toy-- just not a toy for kids who might choke to death.

the asterisk was ruined.

i miss the days when wrapping your head in a plastic bag and suffocating before your parents cared to notice was just called "natural selection" and not "a ten million dollar lawsuit." the days when there weren't disclaimers for opinions, or warnings that ice cream is cold, and wet floors are slippery.

i miss when the asterisk was still magical, is all.

p.s. here's a fun fact: according to lysol's asterisk, there are many things the disinfectant can kill. one of them is herpes. true fact.

seems like they might want to have another asterisk informing users that spraying lysol on their genitals will not cure herpes and may actually cause further damage. you know, to avoid ten million dollar lawsuits.

So You Want to Be a Writer - Advice to Aspiring Wordsmiths

I came across this article in The Atlantic that I feel I should pass on. It's a short read, but it provides some good discussion, asks the right questions and offers up some practical advice to all of us in our journey towards publication.

Tell me what you think? :)

Host the 83rd Academy Awards

Anne Hathaway

On November 29, 2010, it was announced that Anne Hathaway
and James Franco would host the 83rd Academy Awards.

Also, Together with actor Denzel Washington, Anne Hathaway hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway on December 11, 2010.