Where was I?

It's been the requisite minimum 90 days between blog posts so let's see, where was I? Oh yeah, the virtual certainty that I was getting a high-paying new job at a hot internet company based in San Francisco.

WELL, IT TURNS OUT I didn't exactly"get" that job. In fact, they sued me for wasting their time in the interview process. Just kidding, they didn't do that. No, the recruiter sent me a short, very apologetic email that said they were sorry "we" weren't the right fit or something like that, and that they couldn't provide me any more information. So, there's that. I'm not mad or anything -- how could I be, since they paid for me to go to SF completely needlessly and eat some great Indian food and a very good brunch (and some good BBQ and a Lone Star in the Austin airport, and a single bagel at this little SF place famous for their traditional sourdough recipe, called "Panera") -- but I do wish I had not mentioned the whole thing to anybody. Well, anybody but you, blog. I'd never keep anything from you.

The process of not getting that job led to me looking at other jobs in "the private sector" -- that's the phrase that means, roughly, "the place where people are paid to perform in their jobs instead of taking up required space in an org chart," whether my conception of it is realistic or not -- and interviewing for another job at a very large upscale grocer/health food concern based in my hometown. I also didn't get that job, but the process of not getting THAT job was good, and has led me to feel better about the things I can do in my current job to improve my chances of moving on to something that I'll be happier with in the long run.

This has all led me to a few realizations:

1. I am, quite obviously, having a midlife crisis in the most boring way possible

2. I think programming is probably the best career path for me, but

3. it's possible that I'm not well-suited for any kind of modern employment because

4. I'm really bad at being happy doing the same thing -- anything -- for a very long period of time because

5a. I'm a flibbertigibbet

5b. A will-of-the-wisps

5c. a CLOWN

5d. (How do you solve a problem like logorrhea?)

6. The best career for me would be something like programmer / teacher / researcher / theologian / IT manager / blacksmith / chicken tend-er

So, this is where I'm working from. I'm using the flexibility of my current job to work on improving my skills in various facets of the wider arena of information technology, and I'm happier here than I've been in a long time. I'm still looking for jobs, but really it seems likelier than ever that I'm going to spend the rest of my career at the University. And I'm mostly okay with that.

God, what a fucking mess that post was.

Don't go to the Tenderloin

Apparently the worst thing you can do if you want to start blogging about your life again is to tell your blog that you're going to do that.

The condition of perpetual lethargy that I wrote about below persists. It's probably gotten a bit better in the last two months, though, since we have managed to do some of the things humans typically do. We've cleaned our house, had friends over for dinner, cleaned our house some more, celebrated my 34th birthday, done dishes, gotten another dog, cleaned some, eaten takeout, worked in the yard, been to a bunch of school events, camping, etc, etc, etc.

I also have been in the process of potentially (hopefully) getting a new job. My friend Elle who works at a hot internet company from San Francisco that's expanding its offices into our fair city invited me to a recruiting/schmoozing event. I figured the odds were very low that I'd be interested in anything they had to offer but hey -- free food in a nice restaurant! That plus the fact that the illusion that they were interested in me is very appealing to my baser instincts. So, my friend Doc Holliday and I -- looking very much like a gay couple for some reason -- headed out there to hang out with desperate dot-com types occupying various spots on the business-casual to hipster-interview-wear spectrum. The food was good and the weather was nice, but I talked exclusively to Doc, Elle, and a waiter who probably thought I was hitting on him. In short, I didn't exactly get fired up about leaving my extremely secure job at the university. But I checked out the job listings after the event -- mostly to be polite since I had just enjoyed delicious potato balls and kinda-weird doughnuts on this company's dime. Long story short, since then (Oct. 23), I've had two phone interviews, an in-person interview here in town, and most recently they flew me to San Francisco for a 4.5-hour interview gauntlet with nine employees of their company (individually).

So it's looking like I might be leaving the university nest. I've been in my current job for just over five years -- at the university in all my roles for over ten years -- and it's my little city that I love. I will miss it. I'll miss having a post office of my own and being on campus when all the students are gone and the wind could probably blow some tumbleweeds through. I'll miss going to the gym with creepy old faculty members who make me feel like a strapping young Atlas. I'll miss my Thursday bowling league and the complete lack of scrutiny into anything I do at work, ever.

I won't miss the boredom; it can be incredibly dull here when there are no fires to put out and I just have projects to plan -- with nothing on the line, really, if my projects are wildly successful or fail horribly. The dullness can be soul-crushing, and I definitely won't miss that.

Anyway, blog, I just wanted you to know what was going on. Looking at a new job. Probably going to get it. Hopefully it pays all right -- otherwise I will have wasted a lot of people's time and money. Although I did eat the best chicken tikka masala I've ever had when I was in SF for the interview. So at least that will have come out of it if this doesn't pan out.

Letharg

As I mentioned somewhere down the page there, Baby started a new job about three weeks ago. It's great in so many ways -- they treat her like a real person who is going to be there unlike her other job (which she still works at one day a week), where her boss only recently stopped saying, "oh, you're here today?" EVERY SINGLE TIME she came in to work her scheduled shifts, despite the fact that she's been there for over three years. It's great also because she's making more money, and because we're actually on the same campus and I get to see her at work every day, if even for just a few minutes. Really, pretty much everything about it is great. The only problem is that we're ludicrously tired, all the time.

We can't really explain it, but somehow, for the last three weeks, Baby working a new job has made us walking dead. We have to plan everything in ways we've never had to before -- I actually make a full week's worth of lunches for myself on Sunday, and we (mostly Baby) make 2-3 days of lunches for the kids. That's not even quite enough as it is, though, because once we run out of those we don't just make a couple days' more. No, we aim solely for survival during the work week and do the least we possibly can to make sure that we and our kids don't die or develop socially embarrassing diseases. The days aren't flying by, either -- every moment of every day is acutely felt. Last week I somehow mustered up the strength to be extremely productive at work for a couple days, so on Monday and Tuesday I accomplished more than I have in weeks. Unfortunately it turns out I have only a limited amount of energy, because those two days apparently sapped all my resources for the rest of the week, leading all the way up to today, where I'm sitting at my desk, looking at a lengthy to-do list and trying to figure out which items can be postponed with the smallest number of people who could potentially fire me getting angry. (Just kidding, I work for the government. I can't be fired.)

Regardless, I'm looking forward to whatever happening that needs to in order for us to feel like humans again, instead of overworked draft horses.

(Speaking of which, one of the many rad things about our new neighborhood is that we have neighbors with a HORSE. An old white one named MERLIN. How awesome is that? He's very old and just stands around in their back yard, but he is MAJESTIC AS SHIT and classes up the whole neighborhood.)

I think routine is very important to good living, and this recent change is forcing us into a routine more than ever -- so ultimately this is all very good. But right now, I feel like I want to roll the grass up on the ground and find a secret bed down there and go to sleep until everything is normal. (Is that just me?) Or I want to move to the country and live in an Airstream with a big workshop behind it and never have to think about commuting or scheduling kids' pickups or dinner groups again and just sit on the porch (it has a sort of deck porch) and watch it rain and drink some coffee, iced tea, or beer (depending on what time of day we're talking about). Or I want to do that but in a cabin in the mountains of New Mexico. Or live in a hotel in a small town. I don't know.

Anyway, here's me complaining about how sweepy I am because poor me and Baby have to work at our fulfilling jobs that pay us decently for work we enjoy. BOO HOO.

New stuff like houses, jobs, and toddlers

Over the summer we sold our condo, moved out of our rental house, and bought a house -- which we love. We've been waiting so long for this that it maybe started to feel like the Answer To All Our Problems. It's great but it turns out it didn't bring our dead loved ones back to life, ease the difficulty in other family relationships, or resolve any of the problems associated with being kind of poor. But it's a very good thing overall. I can see Baby and I getting old in this house. I don't want to say dying because that's morbid and we've had quite enough of that, but I'll say it's the kind of place I can imagine us keeping indefinitely.

(I know we're not "poor" by any reasonable definition of the word and we are not directly affected by systemic generational poverty, but considering that there are five people in our family now we have a lot of expenses and don't make a lot of money. I don't really mind the lack of money -- it's the stress that comes along with it that sucks.)

But in related, great news: Baby got a job! Well, she already had a job, but she got a half-time salaried librarian job! I feel like this isn't my news to share in a public forum and she has, for some reason, not made it widely known -- but the blog is the perfect place to say I think she's awesome and I'm glad that she had to go out and buy a bunch of "boring librarian clothes" that I find oddly hot.

That means figuring out where our boy is going to be hanging out for about four hours a day, five days a week. Oh yeah, that's something else I probably haven't mentioned on the blog before: we had another baby. He's two-and-a-half now. He's awesome. Let's call him ... wow, I can't even remember what I called my oldest child on here ... huh. Okay, her name is Satsuki. The middle child is still Alia (for obvious reasons). And the Boy, born in October of 2010, is going to be ... well, I can't think of any TV or movie characters he reminds me of so I'm going to go with D. Tiger since that's probably his favorite thing in the world right now other than building train tracks, playing "rocket ships," and claiming to not like everything that he in fact loves or desperately needs like going to sleep.

(Rocket ships is a game or series of interrelated games that can include pretending a wooden block is a "rocket ship" that will endlessly blast off the moon and come back. It can also, as of last week, entail going repeatedly down a water slide that also, somehow, sends you to the moon.)

So yesterday we checked out a day care place for D. Tiger. Finding one of these is tricky because it has to (a) work with our schedule, (b) be cheap enough for us to afford, (c) be close enough to where Baby and I work, (d) not be shitty, and (e) have at least one opening available. The place we checked out mostly passes on these points, but it smelled FUCKING AWFUL. At first I thought one of the kids must have just shit everywhere, but I realized eventually that it was the broccoli stems and greasy-looking lettuce they were serving the kids for lunch. I've never walked out into 100-degree heat so gratefully in my life. We're still looking around, since we have a little over a week to figure this thing out. But man, that lunch did not look or smell like anything I want, ever.

So, here's to a new house, a new job, a not-so-new member of our family, and boiled goose. Well, not that actually, but the other stuff.

I'm back

Hi LAAAZLO blog readers. I am back. I am going to start writing here again. Here are things I like to write about:

1. Music. This one is evident. It's a safe choice. I know how to write about it in an amusing way without offending people I love, like, or at least don't hate. Music is neat. I like music. I will continue to write about it sometimes.

2. Theology. This has been an occasional topic for me on this blog, and in book reviews I have written over the years elsewhere. The problem with writing about theology is that nobody gives a shit. If, by some chance, a few people who happened to be interested in what I have to say read something I wrote, I might be able to say something insightful. But: 1. People who don't care would be bored. 2. People who do care but disagree will be pissed off and are unlikely to engage in any productive way (see: Facebook), and will be reinforced in their beliefs. So farrrrt. But I'm probably going to write on the topic anyway. Don't hate me.

3. My family. I love my family and I could write about them every day. But you know what? This is another thing that nobody gives a shit about. My mom -- the only person who gave a shit in the first place -- is dead. My dad can't use a computer. Baby's mom is too cool for school and pretends not to care about our lives -- and I wouldn't really want to write for her anyway (and she doesn't know how to use a computer). Baby's wonderful dad is also unfortunately dead. All of our grandparents are dead. That leaves a few people outside of our families that could potentially care. Most of them already know what's going on in our lives, and the rest of them are probably distant enough that they're not all that interested either. But maybe not. Regardless, Baby has a much better blog that keeps loose tabs on what we're up to.

4. My job. Actually I don't like to write about my job, but I used to do it with some regularity due to a highly incompetent coworker you know of as Mustafa. In truth, not much of interest happens here. I like my job. Is good job.

But I need to write. WE ARE STARTING A NEW CHAPTER IN OUR LIVES (THAT METAPHOR IS UNDERUSED I FEEL) AND EVERY MOMENT IS TRULY PRECIOUS. The all caps reads like sarcasm but it is assuredly not. I could write about my life in so many places, but none of them is quite like a blog. I could write emails to my friends but WHAT WHY WOULD ANYBODY DO THAT. I could write on Facebook but do I really want some dude I went to middle school with to comment on my life? I could and do write on Twitter but between the 140 character limit and the fact that people on there expect me to be at least a little bit amusing, it's not a great place for that. So here we are. This is all to say that I'm back, and I'll be writing here in the way I used to -- not just dumb posts about pop songs, but other dumb posts about my wonderful and boring-to-read-about life.

Hi.

Why I hate Lil Wayne, pt. 329

My dislike for Lil Wayne is well-documented. In short, I think he's a lazy bastard with decent flow but some of the least intelligent lyrics ever recorded in a genre that celebrates quick wits. If he weren't popular I wouldn't care, but he has been lauded by cultural institutions as lofty as the fucking New Yorker as possibly the "best rapper alive." That, coupled with a recent Groupon for Lil Wayne tickets (50% off, but I contend that a better promotion would have been to offer a complimentary bottle of Robitussin with the purchase instead) leads me to believe that the soft bigotry of low expectations has somehow paid off massively for Mr. Carter, as he's been propelled all the way to the top of middle class white culture. I mean, if tickets to your shows are being hawked alongside urban beekeeping classes (which are awesome) and day spa discounts, how do you have any street cred left?



Last night I was listening to 102.3 The Beat on my way to pick up the Captain America movie from a Redbox, (how do you enable the thing where you get paid for mentioning brands on your blog?) when I heard B.o.B's "Strange Clouds." It's certainly not the first time I've heard the song, but I hadn't really paid attention to the lyrics before. First of all, I have to say it's a great song. It can't be ruined even by the requisite Lil Wayne appearance. However, it really demonstrates what I hate about Lil Wayne.



It is easily shown that Lil Wayne is far inferior to B.o.B as a rapper. The whole song is a demonstration of this fact, but the perfect example is when B.o.B says "I'm top chef, you top ramen, I'm top shelf / No last call, to the bartender, what you got left?" That's a reasonably clever lyric -- I mean, it's no "I hit her with that pipe, call that Nancy Kerrigan / Stay on the greenest greens, call us vegetarians," but they can't all be home runs. (By the way, what is a guy born in 1988 doing referring to the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan rivalry?) But when it's Lil Wayne's turn at the mic, he predictably just spits out a bunch of juvenile free-associations that ultimately add up to nothing -- followed by his own take on the previous verse, saying "I'm top dog, you top ramen, I'm top dog / Piru, gangsters, outlaws." This guy is the "feat." on this track, and he doesn't seem to understand the concept of wordplay that extends beyond the most basic of references. Another example of Wayne's work on this track: "Hello World, I'm with a yellow girl, number 2 pencil / These rappers is washed up, spin cycle, rinse you."

B.o.B has gotten plenty of airplay recently, but I say it's entirely possible this track wouldn't have gotten on the radio as it has if it weren't for the presence of this no-talent ass clown. And that's why I hate Lil Wayne: despite a lack of appreciable talent at rapping or producing, he has somehow become the kingmaker for top 40 hip-hop artists who are better than him in every way.

So, in summary, I hate Lil Wayne because he's popular. If that makes me a hipster, then just call me this guy:

The Annals of Questionable Music

The last song I heard before I got on the bus this morning was almost "Hips Don't Lie," which in all honesty I would have been cool with. Instead it happened to be this awesome/terrible thing:



And that's just not right. Especially offensive is the lyric: "hear the cricket singing softly / never heard a sweeter sound / and you know crickets do their singing / by just rubbin' their legs around." Could this be country music's only frottage reference?

So when I got to work I had to combat it by listening to something else. I don't think you can just get rid of an earworm by listening to another catchy song, though. First you have to subject yourself to the offending song (if possible) and listen all the way through, so you have some closure. Then, you have to put it in its context by listening to similar shitty songs. In this case, I had to find some more terrible pop-country with clumsily suggestive lyrics. Let's see ...



No, that won't do, because that song is actually kind of good. Actually, once Baby I watched this TERRIBLE independent movie because Parker Posey was in it. That song was literally the only good thing about the movie. Regardless, I think the innuendo isn't bad enough. Let's see what else we have. How about this:



Holy shit, that's actually pretty awesome. And that innuendo is truly perplexing! What exactly is the plastic saddle? Do I even want to know? I could speculate, but I feel it's beneath the diginity of even this mostly-defunct blog to make suggestions. And God only knows what would happen to my search hits if I mentioned revagination.

Bananas and Lemons

So I took the day off yesterday to celebrate my birth and hang out with Baby, Alia, and ... uh, the new baby, whose nom de blog has yet to be generated. His nicknames around the house are Ike (he bears -- as many babies do -- a passing resemblance to Dwight Eisenhower) and Benazir Bhutto, but I don't think either of those will do. Baby got me a new amp for my Rhodes piano so I can once again torment the household with my sub-mediocre renditions of popular songs and Christmas carols. We ate twice-baked potatoes with steak (mmm ... beef allowance) and afterwards drank beers and played Bananagrams with Arkay and our housemate Mollrats. (I hope she doesn't mind that nickname -- I can't imagine why she would have a problem with it.) It was good times.



Yesterday, I ran into the word "cisgendered" for the first time -- twice. First, in this overlauded but amusing video mocking "postmodern" Christians somewhat accurately. Second, in this thoughtful but amusing blog post ruminating on "Liz Lemonism." Turns out cisgendered is the opposite of transgendered. Who knew? That will be useful in future Bananagrams escapades.

The Liz Lemon post is smart enough, but reading it on the bus this morning -- the wrong bus, by the way, since the driver put the wrong text up on the sign and denied it, despite six of the eight riders having to get off at the first stop and walk back to the transit center -- clarified something about what bothers me about certain segments of feminism. Now, before I go and say something ill-advised about feminism, know that in certain crowds I could easily be called a feminist. My wife, whose RSS reader proves her bonafides, may or may not agree with that assessment depending on the day, but ultimately I am generally inclined to be sympathetic to feminism and highly suspicious of anyone who, like me, would make generalized claims about feminism on the whole.



However, reading the post and the comments I was reminded of my young adulthood as a sort of fundamentalist Christian. Specifically, I was reminded of reading Focus on the Family's BreakAway magazine for teenaged boys. One of the recurring themes of BreakAway was analysis of the content of media from a "Christian perspective," to determine whether the music or movie in question could be called Christian -- primarily to satisfy a legalistic requirement that one only consume Christian products. Readers would write in asking if their favorite bands were Christians. Is Metallica Christian? Is Beck Christian? Is Sonic Youth Christian? Spin Doctors are not Christian because "Two Princes" encourages rebellion against one's parents, by the way. (I don't remember them ever actually critiquing the generally vapid content of any of the "actual" Christian musicians popular at the time.)

Christian

Satanic

Now, I was an English major, so I'm aware that critique of pop culture from an ideological perspective is essentially all the humanities have to offer at this point, but there is something really dumb about this "in or out" attitude. One of the commenters says, "someone once told me that 30 Rock was premised on Liz Lemon’s ugliness, and . . . that made me swear to never watch it. That doesn’t sound like feminism at all to me. Just more picking on women." So, she won't watch a show because it's "not feminist?" That's silly. Even as a young fundie I knew it was okay to listen to The Who, even if they say "fuck" now and again. Lighten up!

Having said that, I'm now going to be accused of supporting the myth of the humorless feminist, so I'll stop on this note: I like women. I like feminism. I'm glad my daughters will reap the benefits of the hard work of feminists past and present. But seriously, avoiding 30 Rock because Liz Lemon is too pretty and not feminist enough is dumber than Dan Quayle decrying Murphy Brown's proud single motherhood.

UPDATE: Baby says this is basically me just now:



Using an image from the very blog I was writing about is a nice touch!

Xmas Wars

It's officially Advent, and that means it's time for everybody's favorite holiday tradition: listening to blowhards complain that Christmas is becoming secularized. My favorite of these complaints -- which are best made from the campout line in front of Best Buy on Black Friday morning as the complainer laces up his Nikes and tightens his elbow pads in anticipation of cracking the skull of anybody who gets between him and his $250-off HDTV -- is that using the abbreviation "Xmas" in place of "Christmas" is part of an agenda to remove Christ himself from Christmas.

Most to least ethnic: Joseph, Mary, Jesus

I'm not really sure what those who would remove "Christ" from Christmas could possibly do to desecrate the holiday any more than we modern Christians have already done, but some people are insistent that this abbrevation is just plain evil. Who would do such a thing? My first thought would be people who are running out of space on whatever they're writing on, but beyond that I can't really come up with a profile of your typical Christmas abbreviator. Except, there is this one blatant instance that comes to mind ...

There! Right at the top of the page, it says "ARXH TOU EUAGGELION IU XU" -- "The beginning of the gospel of I.X.!" What is this I.X. blasphemy? Is this some XX knockoff with gospel influences? Oh wait, it's Mark 1:1 from Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century Bible manuscript, and I.X. is an abbreviation for Jesus Christ. Well, fourth century -- that's kind of late. Maybe the Church was already corrupted with secularism by then.

What about the earliest known gospel fragment that contains Jesus's name? What does it say, eh? Let's see, it refers to someone wearing a purple robe and a crown of thorns, going by the name of ... "I." Oh.


This really leaves only one question: why did the early Church insist on secularizing Christmas?

Performance Evaluations

Yesterday I had to lay off a young, hardworking employee so that I could keep Mustafa -- an old, incompetent, lazy, passive-agressive bastard who is taking Friday off so I can't -- on my payroll. Shit ain't right. My more-competent employee may be a grown man with a shrill laugh more girlish than my five-year-old daughter's, and he may have an underdeveloped sense of professionalism, but dammit, he actually works on shit when I ask him to. You may ask why I can't just fire Mustafa instead. Turns out when you're a member of four protected groups (elderly, foreign, minority religion, slightly disabled) and old family friends with my boss's boss's BOSS, and you have a spouse on the faculty in the same department -- HR won't let you "just get fired." So we're doing these performance evaluations where Mustafa and I sit down with my boss-of-sorts and we go through his job description and enumerate the ways in which he has failed at his modest tasks. This is a painful procedure that I dread every week. In fact, I made my wife have a baby just so I could get out of a month of these evaluations. But I've got one lined up for Friday -- OH SHIT HE'S TAKING FRIDAY OFF! YES! Hot damn, another evaluation postponed! Anyway, the idea is that these evaluations are supposed to (a) lead to the possibility of firing Mustafa or (b) make him realize it might be time to retire, but neither (a) nor (b) is happening as of yet.

I'm supposed to be working on his eval, so I've been thinking about million-dollar t-shirt ideas instead.



Here are a couple of my ideas:

1. Scrawled in fake handwriting: "I'd rather get laid oft than laid off!"

2. A drawing of William Shakespeare (a.k.a. the Bard of Avon, for the slow among you), and above him, in beautiful cheesy calligraphy: "I have a BARD-ON for reading!"



Just spitballing some ideas here. Returning to my terrible management skills -- Mustafa's strategy for keeping his job is primarily to send me a shitload of emails anytime I ask him to do something. So I'll ask him to do a simple task and he'll shoot back (four hours later) an email filled with inane questions that I don't have time to address, along with a list of impediments towards doing his work. Then, when it comes up in the performance evaluation that he's fucked everything up beyond hope of redemption, he can say "Lazlo didn't answer my email about this, so how could I possibly know what I'm supposed to do?" My counterstrategy has yet to be created.



Anyway, this was a blog post I wrote. I was at a Thanksgiving feast the other day (and it was a feast!) and I came up on two friends who said "we were just talking about your blog." I immediately felt the awakening of a long-dormant sense of shame I once knew well, pertaining to not writing enough on my blog. I'm going to turn 31 tomorrow, and I don't want to be that lame 31-year-old with a shitty dead blog just hanging out on the Internet, so I'm going to try to post a bit more. Blame Twitter for my lack of posting, btw.

Yeah, Twitter.

The end of the internet

It's insomnia time, and I've just run out of internet.

Here's the order in which I check for new shit on the internet to amuse myself:

1. Email
2. Twitter
3. Comment threads I've posted on
4. My RSS reader
5. The Onion
6. The Onion A/V Club
7. My wife's blog, to check for new comments
8. Facebook
9. Flickr
10. Huffington Post
11. Drudge Report
12. CNN
13. Fivethirtyeight.com
14. Random comment threads on newpaper websites
15. Chat Roulette
16. Hacking acquaintances' email
17. Casual Encounters

Just kidding about those last three, but God help us all if there's nothing new on any of my sites. I mean, it's pretty obvious that I'm scraping the barrel with the Huffington Post, but it turns out there is more material underneath the barrel, not to mention the possibility of reconstituting whatever was in the barrel from barrel shards trapped in amber in the stomachs of prehistoric termites.

My insomnia-and-boredom-induced browsing this evening has only reinforced my conclusion that the internet is going to destroy civilization as we know it. Democracy simply can't endure the existence of newspaper website comment sections. If Thomas Jefferson had read the comments on any article linked to by the Drudge Report, I have no doubt in my mind he'd have been all "fuck this shit, I'm just going to be king of America."

"ppl are just so fucking dumb lol"

That being said, the internet has brought us much to enliven our lives. For instance, this Gawker article which highlights the "conspiracy theory" (is there a term that does more to discredit the word "theory?") that President Obama (PBUH) was in the video for Tag Team's world-changing 1993 hit "Whoomp! There it is." (My love for this song, and the inanity it represents, is well-documented.) Also, there's a certain amount of satisfaction that results from the schadenfreude (HOLY SHIT I SPELLED THAT RIGHT ON THE FIRST TRY) of watching my distant relatives' nuttier friends utterly lose their shit over the continued presidency of secret Muslim HRH Mr. Obama.

I thought about doing a post where I rate the relative idiocy of Huffington Post commenters and Drudge Report commenters (via articles he links to, since there are -- wisely -- no comments on the Drudge Report itself), but I got depressed coming up with the criteria. Both sites' readers score high on the Reactionary / Didn't Read The Article Before Commenting matrix, but HuffPo readers would probably wreck the curve on Hypersensitivity portion of the exam -- as would the Drudge readers for Vigilante Justice / Internet Tough Guyism.

Anyway, I think I've now bored myself enough that I might be able to get to sleep. So, let me just add this one last thing: HAPPY 30TH, JAMIE! You've had 'em all. You are a super-ho. I bet you're doing something regrettable right now (well, it's 7am where you are, so you're hopefully sleeping it off by now) but I wish you my sincerest well-wishes on this, the anniversary of your birth. You make the world a little bit better; may you continue to do so for the next 30 years and beyond. Prosit!

McCafe revisited

After dramatically spilling every last drop of coffee from my otherwise-untouched travel mug onto the living room rug this morning, I decided I didn't deserve the convenience of homemade coffee and used my recently-acquired Starbucks gift card to get some "Café Estima."*

Since I have, in the past, implied that Starbucks is hardly the right target for McDonald's anti-hipster McCafe radio spots, I felt I would be morally remiss if I didn't tell you what I saw there: the gentleman in front of me in line was wearing -- I shit you not (I would never shit you) -- a black turtleneck. Exactly as the commercial says.



I didn't touch it to feel whether it was itchy or not, and I didn't attempt to strike up a conversation about impenetrable French cinema, and the dude was more of a yuppie businessman type than a hipster, but DAMN if the commercial wasn't right.

I didn't take a picture because I'd hate to have to tell people I got my ass beat in Starbucks taking a picture of a dude in a turtleneck for my blog.

*(I THINK IT MEANS COFFEE RESPECTFUL OR SOMETHING ALL I KNOW IS THERE'S A LADY ON THE LABEL WHO LOOKS LIKE SHE'S BEING PAID A FAIR WAGE FOR HER LABORS.)

How people found this blog in 2009, pt. 3

This is the final installment of the list of search terms people used to find this blog in 2009, categorized and italicized.


Category eight: Beyoncé
beyonce vocoder
obstacles beyonce had to overcome
beyonce reader

If you're looking for a good Beyoncé reader, I'd recommend Scott Foresman Company's Beyoncé Reads! Learn to Read with Beyoncé Knowles, second edition. It's aimed at kids in first grade, and reinforces phonics and "sounding it out" through a series of short stories involving Beyoncé and her coterie of friends and associates.

Also, obstacles Beyoncé had to overcome include being average height, the breakup of Destiny's Child, and acting in a Steve Martin comedy made after 1990.

Category nine: Misc.


This is really my favorite category, becuase for the most part I have no idea how these people ended up at my blog.

christian mccafe the porn star

I'm guessing there's a porn star whose name is Christian McCafe or something similar. Which is pretty awesome, really -- the idea that she decided to call herself McCafe, after the cut-rate McDonald's espresso drinks. Because that was the most sensual or suggestive thing she could come up with. I'm guessing this post is responsible for this searcher ending up here, along with a number of other McCafe-themed searchers.

Since writing my post on the confused McCafe hipster-bashing radio spots, I have actually had the occasion to try McCafe. I have to admit I was a little afraid at first -- what if it were really delicious, and everything I knew turned out to be a lie? Would I have to throw out my beloved scratchy turtlenecks and stop watching French films? Well, that turned out not to be a problem because my "Americano" (ordered black) was a sickly sweet, high fructose corn syrup-laden cup of filth with almost no discernible coffee flavor. I was so relieved.


how to get people angere
is there a reason it seems to be faces on rocks

Probably because you're tripping balls.

nostic cargo shorts

I think you're looking for gnostic cargo shorts. Those are with the rest of the early church artifacts, such as Marcion's Jams and the True Umbros of Paul of Tarsus.

people breathing annoys me

Sorry.

s it rocked mean?
simple simom sxhool fpr advamces pie thrpwong
teddy ruxpin thriller
case study song and lyric bring negative things to the youngs
groupie confessions adam ant
bill cosby gets pie in the face

I don't have time to analyze the last few search terms, but I had to include these because they're so awesome. I love the internet.

Anyway, here's to 2010 -- may it be less 'tarded than 2009.

Postscript to my blogging friends who never blog anymore: HOW DARE YOU. HOW. DARE. YOU. I like Twitter and all (really, I do), but you cannot delve into the minutiae of life with the necessary depth in 140 characters.

I forgot

Today is Saturday, and nobody reads blogs on Saturday. So the third part of that last post is going to have to wait until Monday.

For reasons too dumb to go into in this space, I've been listening to various versions of Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing" this evening.

Every time I listen to this song, I am left with the impression that the singer has a fuzzy concept of how human sexuality actually works. The specific lines in question are: "Yesterday, I was one of the lonely people / Now you're lying close to me, making love to me" and later "Now you're lying next to me, giving it to me." The phrase "lying close to me" makes me think of people who are near but not touching each other. I don't know of a sexual position that matches that description. "Lying next to me, giving it to me" makes sense in that it is actually physically possible, but it still strikes me as a really weird description of sex.



Just saying.

How people found this blog in 2009, pt. 2

Continuing yesterday's post, here are the Google searches that led people to this blog in 2009, broken down by category and italicized for your viewing convenience.


Category five: Perverts

Other than Jon Bon Jovi searches (see below), this category utterly dominated, proving that the Internet is pretty much the grossest thing ever. Below is a small sampling (no, seriously, it's just a sampling) of the searches in this category. (See this post if you're confused about why I'm getting these searches.)

actor young bare feet
devon sawa bare foot
dirty bare soles
dirty barefeet walking pictures
kids barefeet
"bare feet" actors
"messy bare feet"
bare feet in paint
bare feet in pie fight
bare feet kids in movies
bare feet messy
barefeet walk for charity
dirty bare soles gallery
flikr barefoot guys
foot fetishist's wife
feet pie face
feet of actors
kid bare sole
kids "dirty bare feet"
kids bare soles
kids in their bare feet
kids walk around bare feet
kids who love bare feet
sexy guys bare soles of feet
pranks "her bare feet"
writing on bare sole
young barefoot guys

Ahhhhhhhhhhh ... internet. Contrary to what certain commenters may think, I'm not creeped out by foot fetishists. What I'm creeped out by is people who -- to steal a quote from one Amanda Hess writing on the "Christian side hug" -- sexualize even the most mundane forms of human contact. Watching a PG movie primarily in the hope that you're going to see some sexy, sexy feet ... yeah, that's weird. I stand by that. Oh, also I'm creeped out by pedophiles.

Category six: Jon Bon Jovi

There are about a millon of these, and most of them aren't even slightly interesting. My favorite Bon Jovi search is definitely:

cite instances when bon jovi considers his life important

Sorry, pal, but I'm not going to do your Psychology of Bon Jovi homework for you.

Category seven (also 5a, 6a): Questions, various

was bon jovi two face?

No. That was Aaron Eckhart, who looks nothing like ... wait, let me image seach this first. Holy shit, he's practically a dead ringer for Bon Jovi! See?

JBJ

Aaron Eckhart

Also, Aaron Eckhart has the best coffee table art ever:

So, that wasn't a bad question! I liked that one. Thanks for not creeping me out, random Google searcher. Let's see what else we've got.

why do people enjoy going to the islands?

That's another nice question. Maybe a little obvious, but I'll answer it regardless. People like to go to beautiful places with nice weather when they're vacationing, and tropical islands have economies centered around tourism. It can be very relaxing to go to a place where people are accustomed to serving tourists, even if it can feel a bit exploitative at times. Good question. Next?

why do people enjoy fucking

Oh, hmm. Okay, well, you're going to want a question mark on that. And ... well, I'm not going to answer that one. Next?

why do guys like other guys bare feet?

Oh, for fuck's sake.

pic "his feet" "jon bon jovi" fetish

AAaaahhhhhh! Okay, so that one is in the wrong category, but just imagine how disappointed our Google searcher must have been to find a blog that mocked not only foot fetishists, but also Bon Jovi. Just to make it up to you, my pervy friend, here is a picture of JBJ barefoot and humping a tablecloth.

TOMORROW: THE THRILLING CONCLUSION

How people found this blog in 2009, pt. 1

2009 was an interesting year for this blog. Well, the first nine months or so were, since I didn't actually post in the last quarter of the year. I have a good reason for that, though -- you see, I didn't feel like writing anything at any point during those three months.

Nevertheless, a lot of people found the blog, and a large number of them arrived here via Google. Here are some of the interesting search terms, broken down by category and italicized.

Category one: Incompetence in the workplace
incompetent coworker
my coworker is incompetent
my coworker skips work
what to say to an incompetent coworker
jobs you can't get fired from
i am an incompetent worker
long list of diversions in an attempt to avoid responsibility

If you came to this blog looking for advice on what to do about an incompetent coworker, you're in the wrong place. I have an incompetent subordinate and I haven't been able to do anything about it in the almost two years I've been at this job. If you are searching for jobs you can't get fired from, you're on the right path, but the job you're looking for is currently filled by Mustafa and is -- sadly -- unlikely to become available anytime soon.


Category two: Young people, enjoyment
things that people enjoy
25 things young people think
band names for young people
band names list for young people
because young people today enjoy
ross fashion for young people
enjoying in the face of little less than sixteen
things that people enjoy from trees
some joys of like people enjoy

This one just breaks my heart. I'm imagining oldsters trying to figure out how to entertain their grandkids or whatever, only to discover this terrible blog. Well, I'm going to become part of the solution: young people enjoy croquet and mostly they listen to good, wholesome music like Pat Boone or Cannibal Corpse. Also, they love receiving clothes from Ross Dress For Less. And some joy of like people enjoy include running happy in field yes and to drunk easter mallow. You know, from trees.

Category 2a: The bone roller coaster, riding it
ride the bone roller coaster
bone roller coaster

I really wish this had drawn a lot more traffic to my site, but yes, young people also enjoy roller coasters.


Category three: Lil Wayne
what's wrong with lil wayne's voice
why does lil wayne use the vocoder so much
lil wayne's voice
do lil wayne get stuck writing
down lil wayne's voice
is lil wayne's voice natural
obstacles lil' wayne face

In response:
1. What's wrong with Lil' Wayne's voice is that it makes him sound like he's a robot dying of emphysema. He uses the vocoder so much because a teleporter accident fused his larynx with a nearby autotuner.
2. No, he does not get stuck when he's writing songs, because he doesn't "write" anything, per se. He freestyles terrible rhymes over shitty samples, laughs at his own jokes, and repeats words in order to make his rhymes work.
3. Obstacles Lil' Wayne has had to overcome include addiction to cough syrup and a general lack of talent. Working in his favor, however, is the apparent inability of music consumers to discern between music that is good and that which is well-marketed. Also, the aforementioned teleporter accident has doomed him to slowly transform into Jeff Goldblum.

Category four: Hipsters
hipsters in san antonio
40 year old hipster
overweight hipster

Don't get nasty, brother. Also, I'm not forty. And I'm only ... slightly overweight. Fuck you, Google.

Coming tomorrow: MORE EXCITING GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS OOOOOH SHIIIIIIIIT

The Talented Mr. Snipes

(or: The blog post in which I pretend to be a racist)

Greetings, blog friends.

Below is a new blog post that "I" "wrote."



laaazlo: morning
danecookfan4life: good morning
laaazlo: without consulting the internet, do you know what the vietnamese currency is called?
danecookfan4life: dong?
laaazlo: yes
laaazlo: dong
danecookfan4life: lucky guess on my part
laaazlo: always bet on dong
danecookfan4life: that's what that guy from designing women said
laaazlo: yes, wesley snipes from designing women
laaazlo: or maybe it was in ghostbusters
danecookfan4life: no. wesley snipes said always bet on black
danecookfan4life: the guy from designing women said always bet on dong
danecookfan4life: although i think he said it in mannequin
laaazlo: i've always preferred wesley snipe's work in driving miss daisy
laaazlo: although his standup movies (delirious, raw) were quite excellent, if a little homophobic
laaazlo: pretty good for a guy who got kicked off the mets for doing cocaine
laaazlo: and then murdered his wife and her lover but got off scott-free with some highly skilled self-representation in court
laaazlo: although you feel for him, since he was only recently allowed basic civil rights in south africa
laaazlo: which is ironic, since mr. snipes is 70% of the population of that country
danecookfan4life: you should publish this under a pseudonym.
laaazlo: my most well-known pseudonym is probably a little too well known
danecookfan4life: you can find another
danecookfan4life: Here's one for you: The Talented Mr. Snipes
laaazlo: i'm going to start another pseudonymous blog for mock racism
danecookfan4life: you can't go wrong with that
laaazlo: all right
laaazlo: i'm on it

UPDATE: Early reviews of this post have declared it as truly racist, since there is no such thing as mock racism. I have also been equated with the kind of man who would wear a shirt with a rape joke on it. I would like to state for the record that I do not presently own any rape-themed shirts, nor do I currently have plans to acquire any. I also plan to prove that I am in fact not racist by following this post up with a completely non-racist one.

So I'm getting into this "blogging" thing

It's just the coolest! See, weblogging -- or 'blogging for short -- is where you update your homepage with links and stories about all the shit you do and want friends and strangers to know all about! I found out about it from these guys Matthew and Jake from MIT. They're sort of iconoclasts; one wears a JESTER'S HAT and the other has dyed his hair purple. PURPLE! Anyway, weblogging is hot shit right now and everybody's going to love it. I'm hoping this "Yahoo" homepage that Matthew and Jake have on their reverse links page might "link" to my weblog. I wonder who I'd need to write for that?

But seriously folks.

I got an offer for a freelance writing gig, based on the Bon Jovi post. At first I was excited -- I like writing, and I would love being paid for it. The trial assignment was reasonable enough, but the client wanted something hip with recognizable pop culture references and I realized pretty quickly that I know jack shit about pop culture. (Also, I'm not hip, but that's well-known.) I know a lot about some things -- namely classic rock -- but my main exposure to current pop culture comes from radio hip hop* and The Hater; and even with those I have to refer to Urbandictionary and Wikipedia constantly to get references. So I flaked on the dude (if you're reading this -- sorry!) and somehow that completely killed my ability or desire to write. I think I didn't want to look like an asshole by writing for my own pleasure after I left somebody else in the cold.

But the reality is that I am, in fact, part asshole. I occasionally need to scream out "I DON'T WANT NO PART OF YOUR TIGHT-ASS COUNTRY CLUB, YA FREAK BITCH!" This blog is the Franklin to my Buster.**

With that in mind, I'm about to type something so annoying, so asshole-ish that I would never in a million years say it aloud. Are you ready? Here goes: I don't have a TV.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," you're thinking, "not one of these douchebags. Get off your fucking high horse already you hipster piece of shit. Go ride your fixie down to Best Buy and order a fucking bigscreen already." Your internal monologue isn't afraid to work blue and is surprisingly hostile but I'm going somewhere with this, so calm down already. Ever since I moved out of my freshman dorm room, I haven't had a TV. At first, I just didn't buy one because I didn't get around to it. Then I realized that I actually like not having a TV of my own (I've lived with numerous TV-owning roommates in the intervening years). It's partially due to my extroverted personality -- watching TV by myself is unsettling and I can't pay attention.

Regardless, when I realized I was going to be one of those people without a TV, I decided not to mention it if I could at all avoid it. This decision -- ten years running -- has given me an especial dislike for people who LOVE to mention their TV-less status whenever possible. The other day I was talking to a new employee who happens to have the same last name as a character on 30 Rock. When I mentioned that fact she said, "Oh I rarely watch TV -- I actually don't even have one." Oh really? Well, la-tee-dah, lady. Aren't you just St. Francis of Assisi? Look, I've been "rarely watching TV" since you were "rarely" watching the Smurfs in your Underoos, so S-T-F-U already.

Of course I didn't say any of that to her face -- I'm just going to make a point of asking who she likes on American Idol every time I see her.

* Shut your mouth, this shit is delightful.

** Yeah, I know Franklin is GOB's puppet, but he's most brilliant in the hands of the eternally-repressed Buster.

On the internet, everybody knows you're a perv

I'm going to start with a digression. The title of this post is a reference to a famous New Yorker cartoon by some guy named Peter Steiner. The cartoon has one dog using a computer, talking to another dog. The computer-using dog says: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." And that's the joke. He's a dog, and nobody knows it -- on the Internet. You know it's a good joke because it has the word "Internet" in it, and the internet is inherently humorous if you're a print cartoonist or Jay Leno. It's really quite droll, trust me. Just think about it.

Oh, there it is up there. Ha! A dog. Oh man, the life of a New Yorker cartoonist must be difficult. First you have to find out what are some good joke topics by spending upwards of five minutes listening to CNN while you make breakfast, and then you have to come up with a sentence that includes one of those topics. And then draw a picture. (In defense of Peter Steiner, his quotes in the linked Wikipedia article make it sound like he thinks the joke was dumb too.)

Anyway, a few years ago I was innocently browsing the IMDB user reviews of the movie Hook (I have no idea why), when I noticed an interesting review by one "Mr. SNL." Here it is, in its entirety:

I liked this movie a great deal. I enjoyed the actors performances a lot and I am glad to see such great actors in these roles. The story is well done as well with all of the original cartoon's aspects as well as some new ones. My favorite scene in the movie is where they're all at the table eating their imaginary supper. That is, until Peter starts a huge food fight. That's why it's enjoyable for kids because they all end up getting pies in the face and getting messy. I liked how they even threw pies at Tinkerbell. And it always makes me laugh to see Tinkerbell's bare feet get covered in messy pie and then she slams her bare feet down in the mess. I also find it hilarious when all of the cake and mess squishes up between her toes. Even Robin Williams stands in the mess on the table in his bare feet. I like how actors will do lots of stuff like this. This is a very good film.

I clicked on Mr. SNL's name to see the rest of his reviews, and I started to notice a theme. Let's see if you can detect it as well, dear readers. Here is the review that Mr. SNL (email address: simmadownnow) wrote for "Malcolm in the Middle":

They're a real family, bare feet and all!

This show is very realistic. I especially like how all of the characters act like real members of an average family. They all seem like they ARE part of a family. I also like that they don't always stay in their shoes like on other shows. They walk around in bare feet and the actors aren't afraid to take their shoes and socks off and show their bare feet and soles on camera. All in all, this is a very realistic show.

And his review of "Bill Nye, the Science Guy":

Great show for kids!

This is a great show and i hope it sticks around for a long time. It teaches kids many different things about science and uses things that they find enjoyable and fun to watch. For example, on the dinosaurs episode, they had two kids put their bare feet in paint to make footprints on paper...kids love to get their bare feet very messy! On the momentum episode, they had pies thrown at Bill's face. I don't know anyone who doesn't like getting a pie in the face! Kids like to walk around in bare feet also, and in one episode, these two guys were in their bare feet and they fell over in their chairs so you could see their bare feet. It was great. I really like how this show relates to kids. Kids love it and I hope it's around for a long time!

Although he wasn't quite as positive about the 1999 Seth Green vehicle "Idle Hands"; it seemed to be lacking some important elements:

Amazing movie, but....

This is a very funny movie from start to finish. It is very interesting how the actors interact with the hand. I like how Devon Sawa did very well manipulating his hand the way he did. I notice in films and on TV that actors sleep with their socks on. I like the way that Devon slept in bare feet and put his bare soles on the table for us to see. They were dirty bare feet which was also realistic because after walking across the floor, your bare soles do get dusty. I think an added piece of humor would have been if someone popped up and smashed a pie onto Devon's bare feet. It would have been interesting to see him react to his bare feet being covered in pie. I think Seth Green should have been in his bare feet in his house too. All in all, this was a good movie.

If only the director had listened to the fans for once, then Idle Hands could have been a blockbuster, at least among the pie/foot fetishist set.

FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP

I encourage you to read the rest of Mr. SNL's reviews. They're full of childlike naivete and/or unspeakable perversion. The best comments are those in which he makes suggestions like "I think if they wanted to make it funny, they should have used cream pies instead of mousetraps and still had them walk in their bare feet and step in the pies," or just when he makes little observations such as "kids love messy feet," and "kids love having messy bare feet," or even "Who doesn't love pies in the face and messy bare feet?" Who indeed. It's like this guy's never heard of porn. Frankly, he would be a lot less creepy as a porn collector than as somebody who watches regular TV shows and movies in the hopes of glimpsing a bare foot and/or pie. However, he is less creepy than accidentally stumbling across a foot fetishist's flickr photostream, and infinitely less creepy than the time an innocent flickr picture of my wife was favorited by -- I shit you not -- an apparent gaucho pants fetishist.

A question for cellphone designers

Is there a functional reason why cell phones are deisgned to explode like a Rock'Em Sock'Em Robot when dropped? I'm only asking because I would feel slightly better to know that my phone's histrionic part-shedding explosions weren't just for the benefit of some sadistic product designer who gets off on that kind of thing. Of couse it can't be the work of one man, since literally every phone I've owned has lost its battery and back case when dropped from more than a few inches.

The first person who tells me their iPhone doesn't explode when dropped gets punched.