I remember our first VCR: a huge, awkward, top-loading machine with a wired remote control. Like most forms of technology in our house (a Commodore VIC-20, a "cable-ready" TV, a police scanner) my brother bought it with earnings he made as a mechanic at a factory. There was no room for it on our TV stand, so we put it on a chair next to the stand, and set about the business of watching movies and taping programs.

My sister lived in Germany at the time, which was all Nena and Falco and Sprockets, completely devoid of American culture. She'd send money for blank VHS tapes and I'd fill them, six hours at a time, with what I thought every American needed to be watching in the 80s. MTV videos, Dallas, Vikings games, and sitcoms like Night Court. She'd send the tapes back after she was done with them, along with letters explaining what she did and didn't like. Then I'd try adjust my recordings to better suit my audience. It was fun, like programming my own TV station at age 12.

I've asked several people about early video stores in their neighborhood, and received mixed responses. In our neighborhood, there was a surprising number of video stores, and all of them were independently owned. It seemed like every middle-aged couple with the ability to invest a couple grand suddenly opened a video store. My favorites were All-American Video (which seemed to employ weirdos exclusively) and Late Night Video (which was open until 11pm!). In addition, however, there was a tiny shop we called "the hole in the wall" that couldn't have been much bigger than the average gas-station men's room. Another shop had a 90% Betamax collection. Stores opened and closed all the time. Every gas station in the neighborhood also had a crappy video collection -- usually bad action movies and softcore porn, the type of entertainment enjoyed by the kind of people who go to the Milk House to shop for groceries and cough syrup, and maybe a few French ticklers from the men's room vending machine.

The thing is, I can't think of a modern-day equivalent to the mom & pop video store. What trend today inspires dozens of independent businesses to crop up all over the place, with hopeful entry-level investors banking on cashing in on this newfangled craze? None. You don't exactly see iPhone accessory shops taking over the old pet store on the corner.

Ultimately, all the stores failed, except for one: Video Vision, which became a successful chain, and now features not only video, DVD and game rentals but also tanning beds and a Ticketmaster outlet. Late Night Video survived longer than all the others, but eventually became a Mr. Movies, and then closed when Hollywood Video finally moved into the neighborhood.

All video rental stores will probably tank in about five years. By then we'll all have video devices in our abdomens.

Thanks to E&T for the shelves! I don't know what we would have done without them. Well, actually I do. We would have put up with books in piles around the apartment until we got sick of it and shelled out too much money for particle-board shelves from Target. Thanks for helping us avoid that!

Just to announce to those who didn't already know: As of this month of July, my girlfriend Christa and I are officially living together. It's a good match, for many reasons, one of which is that we both really, really like words. We both majored in English. We both have blogs [link]. But best of all, we both have a lot of books, and now that we're living together, we've been able to co-mingle our personal collections, put them into all kinds of geeky order, and get far too excited about strapping on our spectacles and reading the living shit of of them.

I'm not sure why I'm doing this, other than as an excuse to re-open the comments to my fellow nerds and to put this list in writing for some undetermined future purpose, but here goes.

Below is a list of our current fiction section. (Yes! We have sections! Fiction, poetry, drama, reference, general nonfiction, art, web design, graphic novels, how-to, cookbooks, and sports, to be exact.) Please don't call me/us crazy.

What I'm asking is, if you were faced with this collection, what would you read first? Now, it's true that I've already read some of these books before, but I have no qualms about re-reading books. That's why you own books in the first place.

What would you read? What should I read?

* I was gonna re-open comments for this post, but I deleted all the comment code out of my template (to prevent lapses just like this!) and I can't put it all back in for just one post. Sorry kids! But I'd still like to hear your feedback, so email me at bchase@gmail.com. And let's face it, if you're willing to read through this huge nerdy list and then offer comments, going to your email is not much of a hurdle.

Continue reading "Das Bookshelf" »

Every time Apple announces a new product, I get excited. All of this started when I bought a 40Gb third-gen iPod back in 2004. That thing served me well and I completely wore the crap out of it. In the three or so years I used it before dropping it on the floor and wrecking the hard drive, it was my constant companion. It perfectly suited my lifestyle at that time, and I loved it.

So tonight as I think about camping out to get the new iPhone that comes out tomorrow, I have to keep imagining that device's place in my current lifestyle. And I absolutely cannot.

Most importantly, I don't have any way to carry it. My current phone fits neatly in my pants pocket. The iPhone is designed for women and for guys who carry a murse. I'm not going to carry a murse. Ever. Also I'm not going to walk around with an iPhone in my hand at all times. And I'm not going to start wearing cargo pants either.

Second, I don't spend that much time on the phone, nor do I spend that much time listening to headphones anymore. I used to have a job at a desk where I listened to headphones 8 hours a day, and the 3-G iPod's weak battery couldn't even keep up with me. Now I have a job around huge noisy machines that like to crush little electronic things into sand.

Third, I really don't want to become one of those people who checks their email in the elevator. Not that I ever ride elevators, but you get the idea. Having been internet-obsessed at various points in the past -- and still leaning in that direction in the present -- I've come to the conclusion that I'm much happier and healthier when I experience life in all three dimensions. There's no need to feed bad habits.

So the iPhone is not for me. Pardon me if this post was boring, but I didn't write it for you. I just wanted to make this point to myself.

Clockwise from upper left: 1) carrots, peas, and roasted red-pepper hummus; 2) almond & rice crackers; 3) tomatoes, avocados, black olives and mozzarella cheese with salt & pepper; 4) lentil soup.

Today I got a Mr. Bento system, which is basically a large thermos that holds four bowls which stack on top of each other. Traditionally, the bento is a Japanese lunch box with many separate compartments for a variety of foods. Some people get really cute about Japanese bento boxes and try to make them as pretty as possible, but what appeals to me about bento is the idea of bringing a variety of foods with you.

Every day, I bring pretty much the same lunch to work: Turkey sandwich, orange, banana. Don't get me wrong; I truly believe that those three foods are among the most perfect on earth. But still, even though I occasionally toss a plum in there to stir things up, it gets a little boring.

Leftovers are great when you have them, but smaller items like vegetables, chips, and crackers aren't so convenient to bring to work. Sure, you can buy them in individual packages at 35 times their worth not to mention the extra garbage they produce. And then there are things like hummus and dips, which are just too annoying to pack for travel. All in all, it's easier to eat the same thing every day, and avoid variety altogether.

Which is why I picked up this Mr. Bento system. It all packs together in one container, doesn't need refrigeration, and allows for infinite variety.

Still, I have my reservations. I'll let you know how it works out.

A few weeks ago, I gave my girlfriend the OK to let her cat move into my (well, I guess our) apartment. It was a struggle. I don't like cats. I'm allergic to cats. And among all cats, Toonces is especially challenging to admire.

I often berate Christa about her cat's name. "Toonces"? I ask. "Seriously? You are a writer. A good writer. How could you possibly name your cat Toonces?"

"I didn't want to!" she says. "It's my ex-boyfriend's fault! He's the reason I have the cat in the first place!"

"If you were going to name your cat after a third-rate SNL character, you should have named him Lothar of the Hill People. Or better yet Mr. Robinson."

"I wanted to name him Perro," she says. I have to admit this would have been a great cat name. Unfortunately we can't just start calling him Perro, because he, unlike most cats, actually understands and responds to his name. Even more unfortunately, I have to scream that name several times a day. It's humiliating - like screaming, "It's Pat!" over and over again. All day long.

My hatred of cats began at birth. Before I was even conceived, my family owned a cat called Nelson. Originally, my brilliant siblings had named it Nelly, a name which stuck for several years until one of the grown-ups flipped the cat over and discovered that Nelly had nuts. Nelson was the reason for all of my sisters' tears when every last one of their shoes suddenly reeked like cat piss, and my parents couldn't afford replacements. He was also to blame when my toddler face and torso became a mosaic of cuts and scratches. I hated that cat. There was nothing cute about him.

I distinctly remember when tumors took over his body and he had to be put to sleep. My mom took me aside and gently explained it to me. I was probably five or six. "Nelson is very sick and he's going to go away," she said. "He's not going to come back." I understood the situation a lot better than she thought I did, and I wasn't sad in the least.

"Good riddance." That was my general feeling. From then on, all of my cuts and scratches would come from things that mattered, like repeatedly attempting to ride my Big Wheel down the stairs, for instance.

Dozens of dogs crossed our door throughout the years. My siblings were always getting them, then moving into pet-free apartments and pawning them off on us. I loved it. Dogs were awesome. I couldn't get enough of them.

Then one frigid night in November of 1985, fueled by five or six bottles of Old Milwaukee and a couple of "bumps" of Phillips peppermint schnapps, my dad suggested that it might be really great to have a cat to lay on our laps and keep us warm on nights like these. With the memory of Nelson long distant, I enthusiastically supported the idea. Not even a month later, Chewie showed up on my 13th birthday. My dad came home from work and nearly had a seizure. "That's a huge commitment!" he shrieked.

"But it was your idea!" we all said. He had no recollection. Recalling this, I have to say that my father and I are practically the same person.

Chewie was the exact opposite of Toonces. While he is enormous, she was the runt of the litter. While he is needy, she shunned human contact. A tremendous mouser, she craved the outdoors, shredding screens and shins until she got her way. Every day, she'd leave the porch littered with tiny corpses. Every fall, she'd bring mice inside and let them go to escape into the walls and breed so that she'd have vermin to chase all winter. All in all, she was barely even a pet. She used the house as shelter, ignored the people in it, and completely kept to herself. Her face was covered in scars from fighting and killing other animals. Her ears were literally in tatters. You could dislike her and she was fine with that, because she didn't like anything that was alive.

Toonces, on the other hand, is huge and needy. He has literally never seen a rodent in his life. His hobbies include slamming his head into yours (his head is excessively large for a cat's and he is also excessively powerful, so, it's kind of painful), meowing incessantly because you are not awake, pulling the fur off his own arms (no medical reason - he just likes having bare arms), taking huge stinky dumps in your presence, drinking water from your glass by repeatedly dipping his paw into it and licking the water off, making sounds of protest that resemble someone squeezing a rubber duck, and petting your face whenever he wants attention, which is pretty much all the time.

So yeah, I guess I'm a cat owner now. And to tell you the truth, the big fatass is starting to grow on me. He's beginning to learn the rules of this place - and there are several non-negotiable rules.

And this fall, when the mice make their way inside looking for a place to spend the winter, he'll be able to earn his keep. I have no faith that he'll actually be able to catch a mouse, but maybe being chased by something the size and shape of a gorilla will send them scampering for a different house to invade.

Four months ago, without notice or ceremony, I disabled the commenting system on this blog. I didn't have a problem with the people who routinely commented on this blog specifically (far from it, actually -- my commenters were consistently intelligent and funny). My problem was, and remains, the idea of commenting at large. Every day, I hate it just a little bit more. And every day, I hate the human race even more than that.

Some posts truly are conversations. And don't get me wrong -- I enjoy spirited debate as much as or possibly more than the next person. Hell, I even run a site that's practically devoted to conversation. But for the most part, comments are just a useless and increasingly annoying part of the web that bloggers, corporations, and site administrators seem to find absolutely necessary in this Web 2.0 era.

I think the type of comments I loathe the most are the ones found on newspaper websites. Overall, they read like a transcript of AM talk radio, only without a host. These people come across -- almost without exception -- boorish, asinine, and flat-out stupid. They make me cringe with shame, and whenever I read them, I become more and more frightened for the world we live in because these people can vote! And if you should ever be wrongfully accused of a crime, these people will make up the jury of your peers! Right this second, most of them are at home passing their values on to their children!

My suspicion is that newspapers allow these comments on their websites because they know that it drives up their hit-count. I know I read them every day, even though I agree with absolutely none of them and they absolutely disgust me. Also, whenever someone cuts me off in traffic, I pull up next to them at the next stoplight so I can get a good look at the asshole. It's a similar behavior, and I admit that I'm part of the problem.

Another loathsome type of commenter is the uninformed helper. Try this: Next time something goes wrong with your computer, or your car, your German shepherd, or your meatloaf, go online and Google the problem. Chances are, you'll find a slew of blogs and message boards where someone has posted about having the exact same problem you're having. They've made the mistake of reaching out to the commenting community on the internet.

Usually, the first commenter will suggest something imbecilic, such as "Are you sure your computer is plugged in?" or "Maybe you put the meatloaf in the fridge instead of the oven. I DID THAT ONCE!" As if that isn't bad enough, the second comment will often post, "I don't know." I. Don't. Know. People actually take the time to read a help request they know nothing about, then log in, and post that they don't know. Well, thanks, kind sir. Because I was indeed talking directly to you.

I'd like to give a special mention to a certain person who, while he isn't by any means the worst commenter who ever could be, sticks in my mind like a gritty, sandy irritant. I think it was about two years ago, when I posted a photo on my Flick account. In between the time it took to put in the title and tags after I uploaded the photo, someone I did not know or have any connection to posted a complete critique of my apartment in the background of the photo. What he liked, what he didn't like, what I should change, etc. Like I said, I didn't know him, and he didn't know me. I just happened to have the most recent photo on Flickr, and he clicked on it. Way to make friends and influence people, buddy.

Lastly, there's lowest common denominator: the scourge of the internet, the "me-too" commenter. While these people have been around since the net began, they've taken on a new level of sophistication since blogs boomed in popularity a few years ago. Now the me-too commenter is a blog whore who skims blog posts for a general idea, which they turn into a bland, inane comment, all so that they can get their own name out there as much as possible. You can frequently spot them, because often it's obvious that they haven't read the post or the other comments very closely if at all. It's just shameful and annoying, and I want it to end. I fear, however, that it's only beginning.

In concept, comments would be a good idea if they actually did promote community and debate. And that's possible. They can, in some rare cases. But for the most part, they're a tool to drive up hits. Their relative anonymity and lack of responsibility tend to bring out the worst in people.

Not everything needs to be a conversation.

Not just an afterbar, but quite possibly the afterbar. Dancing to vinyl records while the sun is already up and your neighbors are going to work -- this is the benefit of keeping a nonstandard schedule.

Last week, my cousin asked me if I was going to attend my nephew's wedding on Saturday. "No," I said. "I have to work all weekend." Another woman who was standing nearby was incredulous.

"You're working instead of going to a wedding?" she said.

"His own nephew's wedding!" my cousin said.

The truth is, I didn't even know about my nephew's wedding that Saturday. Oh, sure, I got an invitation in the mail a month or so beforehand, which I put on an table somewhere intending to RSVP. But of course I never did. I forgot all about it, and when the day came, I hadn't taken it off or bought a present, or anything even close to that.

I felt bad. Then I remembered that I'd never attended any of my nephews' or nieces' weddings. I'm not sure whether that made me feel better or worse. But it made me understand myself a little bit better.

I can't believe that there are people so together that when they receive a wedding invitation, they actually RSVP, then go out and purchase a present, get dressed up, and attend the wedding. With a guest! Chances are, they don't even get drunk at the reception and knock over the ice sculpture either. These people are like aliens to me.

It's not that I don't care. I do care. When someone gets married, I wish them the best of luck, and would happily do so in person if only I could remember it was happening. The thing is, I'm 35 years old now, and my mind has been operating in this way for a long, long time. If you're getting married, I would like to receive an invitation, but I can't promise to attend or even to RSVP. I may attend. You never know.

Here are some other issues I'd like to get out in the open, as long as I'm on the topic.

» Unless you're on Facebook, I don't know when your birthday is.
It pains me to say this, but I have no idea when any of my siblings were born. I know the approximate season, and maybe the month, but that's as close as I can come. I know my dad's birthday, but only because it's September 11. (I honestly even forgot that every year from 2002-2005, somehow.)

» If your utility company doesn't have an online bill pay option, or better yet an auto-pay, don't expect me to pay you until you shut something off.
Seriously, though, this isn't my fault. It's two thousand goddamn eight. Do you actually expect me to write a check, put it in an envelope, go to the Post Office to buy a stamp, and mail your money to you? How cute. Yes, I realize that I work at the Post Office, and don't think the irony is lost on me. And don't think I don't have to stand in line for an hour like everyone else. Off the clock.

I don't want to be this way, necessarily. But more and more, I'm realizing that this is how I am. Please don't hate me, and also, I beg you, please don't reciprocate.

It took about 20 minutes after leaving Ely's Peak before I noticed the first tick. Luckily, it wasn't on me, but on Christa, and even more luckily, it wasn't on her skin, but on her sweatshirt. We had just pulled into the driveway and were getting out of my car when I saw the little demon. I picked it off and dispatched it, but it was then that I knew (flashing back to all the bushwhacking we'd done while leaving one trail and searching for another) that the tickiness had only just begun.

Like good, clean citizens who would rather not contract Lyme disease or walk around with something resembling a white jelly bean attached to their foreheads, we inspected ourselves as soon as we got in the door. Nope. Nothing. Not a tick on board. Still, I was skeptical.

Crawling through the ticky woods of Northern Minnesota in springtime is not always a delight. I remember one time several years ago, when a friend of mine found something like 23 ticks after we returned from an afternoon hike. I got luck again that time -- I only had six. That was probably the most I've ever had, even though I've done quite a bit of hiking, backpacking and camping in my time. The only thing I can possibly attribute it to is that I eat a lot of garlic.

Anyway, you want the horror story and that's what I'm here to write so here it is. After inspecting for ticks, I took a shower and we went out to dinner. Then we came home and watched a movie and went to bed. About two hours later I woke up, scratched my belly, and bam -- there was a tick.

I don't know if you've ever removed a tick .64 seconds after you woke up from a dead sleep, but let me tell you, it usually doesn't involve tweezers and a careful inspection of where the head meets the abdomen, like all the pamphlets tell you. I grabbed that little fucker and yanked it like I was free-falling 50,000 feet in the air and pulling the ripcord. I leaped up, stumbled into the kitchen and burned his eight-legged ass. Then I crawled back into bed and slept the sleep of the just.

But in the days since all of this happened, here's what I've come to find out. When you grab a tick and yank it out of your body, inevitably some of his body, namely his head, stays where he buried it. Also, when you grab a tick by the abdomen really hard, he, like any rational being, spits the contents of his abdomen into whatever it is he's chewing on. All of this leads to a big, itchy, red skin-volcano that oozes goo until the goddamn bug head is expelled down onto the villagers below. And when you wake up in the middle of the night and find that, you have to leap out of bed once again and look up Lyme disease on WebMD until you're satisfied by their claims that you won't get it if you remove the damn thing within 36 hours. Plus you knew it was a woodtick anyway, not a deer tick, but that doesn't matter when you're looking at Mt. Vesuvius on your own abdomen at 4:39am.

I should have just delicately removed it, flicked it onto the old lady, and went back to sleep. That would have saved me a lot of trouble and worry.

My awesome laptop is now a craptop.

For quite some time, the battery has been completely drained. It would hold maybe 15-20 minutes of charge, then would rapidly fade and shut off -- almost without warning. I put off getting a new battery and just kept it plugged in most of the time. Usually, there was an outlet within reach so I didn't mind so much.

The barrel on the power adapter was a little bent. Sometimes, I'd have to play with it a little to get it to connect. But it always did so that was no big deal either.

Then suddenly, the adapter stopped working. No adapter plus no battery equals no power. No laptop. No music. No Photoshop. No fun.

So, I bit the bullet and ordered a new battery and a new adapter. I did this at the end of last week, so I had to sweat out the weekend without a laptop. Last night I came home to find that my new goodies had arrived. I plugged it in.

Nothing. Cold. Dead.

I popped in the battery and found that it had about 30 minutes of charge. Which would be no big deal if the adapter worked -- then I could charge it up. No such luck. The little charging icon never appeared.

Just for kicks, I thought I'd try the old adapter once more. I plugged one end into the wall socket, and was bringing the other end toward the computer, when a spark jumped out of it.

Apparently, this thing's been sparking up the inside of my laptop. The computer runs fine when it can get power (like, from the battery). But it seems that either the DC board or the Logic board is shot. A new DC board costs about $100, but a new Logic board will run something like $500-800, making it a pointless purchase. Then there's the labor charges. Normally, I like to try to fix things like this myself, but after perusing the instructions online, I won't be attempting this kind of a fix myself. Nearly every component inside the laptop needs to be carefully removed before the fix can happen.

I'm completely miffed, as you might guess. If it's the DC board, and the labor charges aren't too high, well, I guess I'll have to pony up for that. But if it gets much higher than that, I feel like I should just look into a new laptop. And I simply can't afford the shiny MacBook Pro that I truly want, so I'll have to settle for something less. Something plastic and pedestrian.

At least I know what I'll be spending that "economic stimulus" check on.

When I was in college and slightly after, I wrote down a lot of hilarious lists. In fact, a friend and I used to fill entire notebooks with lists, until access to technology allowed us to start filling floppy disks instead. When that technology started to disappear, I printed out the good lists I could find and put them away with the notebooks. I've completely forgotten the majority of the lists, but one popped into my mind today.

The list was "Things in Contention for Being Our Favorite" and it was very long. It included all kinds of great things like old men with huge glasses, rodeo clowns, and gale-force winds. When we looked at the list, we could never tell you what our absolute favorite thing was (it was futile to even guess) but every item on the list was definitely in contention.

Anyway, today as I was walking down the street, not really knowing where I was going, not really having any kind of plan about what I should do for the rest of the day, I thought, "This is in contention for being my favorite." Meanwhile, people rushed by on their way home from work or to the grocery store or to pick up their kids from daycare. They all had things to do and deadlines to meet. The biggest decision I had to make was whether to turn left or right at the next block.

Don't get me wrong; This doesn't happen very often. Normally, I'm the person driving down the street frowning at all the lazy bums who are moseying along without a care. Which is I why I love being the bum. I scowl at them out of envy.

I remember seeing a 1960s movie on TV, when I was in high school in the 80s. Who knows what the movie was, but I vividly recall a scene in which a couple of guys pull their car up to a couple of girls who are sitting on the sidewalk. "Wanna go to San Francisco?" One of the guys asks. The girls look at each other and shrug. "Sure," they say, and climb in the car. Even though my teenage brain was fascinated by such casualness, I never went on to build my own life in that way, and truth be told I wouldn't want to live like entirely like that. Still, plenty of balance in that direction is essential to my happiness.

Around the time when we made the lists, another thing I enjoyed doing was getting lost on purpose. It's great in a car, but even getting lost on foot or on a bike is fun. The whole time, I'm wondering "Where the hell am I?" and "What the hell goes on in that place?" and "Who are these people?" Meanwhile, those people are looking at me wondering what I'm doing in their neighborhood and what I'm looking for. The best and worst thing that can happen in that situation is for someone to actually ask you what you're looking for.

"Salvation," is the best response, even though I don't even know what that means.

My taxes are not complicated. I have one job, no dependents, and I own practically nothing of interest to the IRS, unless some government-employed CPA wants to come over to my apartment and play Guitar Hero III or watch season two of Northern Exposure. But since I hate doing arithmetic and I hate dealing with the US Mails even moreso, I always use one of the many free eFile options available to those citizens whose lives are uncomplicated by either children or excess wealth.

This year I chose esmarttax by Liberty, because it was recommended to me by the IRS website, and because I used it last year. Let me tell you something. This service is so efficient that I just now successfully (fingers crossed) submitted my 2007 tax return. On the night of April 20th.

Quite a long time ago now -- a responsible time before the April 15th deadline -- I merrily hauled out my W2 and whatever bullshit forms I needed. I plugged in my numbers. The website added it all up for me and told me I was getting a refund. I hit submit. All was well in the world.

Several days later, I checked to see how things were coming.

REJECTED.

I looked up the error code, which consisted of four paragraphs of electronic taxspeak about left and right justification, alphanumeric entries, etc. It didn't tell me where ther error was, only that I had an error, and that that error was Error 0010. At the bottom it said "if you get error 0010, contact us." The only way to contact the service was by filling out a form, so I did.

And then I waited. For days. I was never contacted.

At this point I decided I should do something. I thought the "alphanumeric" thingy might relate to the fact that I abbreviated the word "street" in my address, and used a period after it. So I changed that and resubmitted. More days passed. I was rejected again for the same error code.

By now, it was April 15. I figured I had to do something, so I thought I might investigate the pay service, which costs $30 and allows you to talk to a real person on the phone. I clicked the link, expecting to be lead to more information and WAS IMMEDIATELY SIGNED UP FOR THE SERVICE. No request for confirmation, no warning, just a $30 charge to my freaking credit card. And the clicker -- get this -- I was then presented with the same form I'd filled out days earlier, only this time there was a field for my phone number.

I sighed and entered the exact information I'd entered before, along with my number. And then I waited. Days went by again. No call.

Around April 18, I thought it wise to call the IRS and ask them what I should do. I told them my circumstances. They were as baffled as I was. The only sympathy they could offer was that since I don't have to pay them, the April 15th deadline doesn't mean much to me. There's no late penalty if you're getting a refund. They told me to wait for Liberty to call me back, and if they didn't, to just mail in my return like a senior citizen.

Finally, today, Liberty called me back (hey, it only took 5 days, what do you expect for $30?). They basically told me that I had checked a box somewhere that shouldn't have been checked. "The IRS doesn't have an error code for that, so we just used the closest thing we could," the rep said. Nice. How about you forgo the code and use the goddamn English language? But then, you wouldn't have my $30 would you?

That was what I wanted to say, but I never talked to them. They called while I was at work and left a message on my voicemail.

esmarttax from Liberty, you smell like balls. Next year I'm going to walker myself up to the letter box and mail in my return. And it's all your fault.

So today I was reading Sarah Brown's post about her life's regrets (This sounds like a downer, but it's actually kind of fun, she writes, and I agree) and I was happily thinking about my own regrets, when suddenly I remembered one of the major problems of my youth, which made me actually laugh out loud (or LOL, for you kids out there).

When I was about 16, I seriously had the thought -- like most teenagers -- that I wanted to learn how to play guitar. Faced with this situation, some kids might get a guitar and immediately give it up as if it were a NordicTrack or a BowFlex. Other kids might incessantly talk about learning, but never gather the initiative or patience to actually do it. I, on the other hand, dismissed the thought outright, firmly believing that at 16 I was too old to begin the arduous task of learning to play the guitar. Too old. At 16. This was not the violin, and I was not interested in playing Mozart. I wanted to play Ramones songs -- three-chord songs written by drug-addicted doofuses.

In a similar vein, I remember seeing Lollapolooza II in 1992, which featured the Pearl Jam, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Soundgarden, Ice Cube, Ministry, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. As I was getting ready to go to the concert, I remember thinking that at age 19, I had better enjoy Lollapolooza, because seriously, I was already too old to attend such a thing. (Two years later I saw Lollopolooza IV in 1994 with L7, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, A Tribe Called Quest, the Breeders, George Clinton & the P-Funk All Stars, the Beastie Boys and the Smashing Pumpkins, and I felt even more awkward, being a 21-year-old at such an event, though I thoroughly enjoyed seeing what were then my favorite bands.)

I always felt a lot older than I actually was, and I always had a lot of criticism for most of the people my age. I think I missed out on a lot of fun because of that, but then again, I can't be too sure of that, because I never felt like I suffered from a lack of fun. Most of my memories are pretty fun-filled, so it's hard to tell.

I think this whole trend stopped when I was around 27. It was then that I finally felt my age, which is weird because 27 is not too old to learn guitar or to attend Lollapolooza, or anything, really. Since age 27, I've learned numerous things -- probably more than I learned in my whole four years of college, actually.

Most of all, I've learned to ascertain the things I really am too old to do.

Read and appreciate Thomas Wolfe.

Add Facebook applications.

Go camping in the winter.

Unlike when I wanted to learn guitar at age 16, I have no desire to do these things. The thought of doing them absolutely rankles me. Yes, I just used the word "rankles." I am 35.

I still have plenty of fun.

As I awoke on Easter morning, I said a little prayer.

"Please, Jesus, if I should ever have children, let them not turn out like the Satanic little fuckers visiting their grandparents next door. Amen."

And the thing is, I'm actually being serious, here. When I look out the window and see older one -- the 8-year-old boy screaming like an rabid animal, kicking the deck until the railing breaks loose and using it to "shoot" his little sister ten times before knocking her down and actually biting her on the face, then tearing off her boots and socks and shrieking "YOU'RE DEAD! I KILLED YOU THREE TIMES YOU LITTLE FAGGOT!!" -- I boil with disgust. It's the same thing every time he visits. If he can't punch it, kill it, or gouge its eyes out, he breaks it and turns it into a weapon, which he uses while screaming himself hoarse. They'll visit for four or five hours at a time, and the whole time, he screams obscenities (or, more often, just gutteral noises) and tears up the yard.

That said, at least the kids are playing outside.

I can see this kid's life and his future perfectly every time I peer out the window at him. I imagine he kills a lot of squirrels, and the occasional stray cat. He's a D-student who spends a lot of time in the office, probably for bullying weaker kids, or more likely for having "emotional outbursts." After a short life marked by unemployment, petty larceny, and date rapes, he'll probably kick off around age 26 when he either drunkenly plows his snowmobile directly into a white pine, or else burns to death in a meth-lab explosion somewhere south of the Oliver bridge.

I can't really decide which is more likely.

Every now and then, the girl will scream until their mom will come out, cigarette in one hand and cell phone in the other. The girl will whine to her mom about what the boy is doing, and the mom will reply, "STOP BEING A TATTLETALE, CAROLINA!!!!" Then she'll slam the door, and, if it's dark outside, turn off the yard lights so the kids will have to "play" in the dark.

So I guess it isn't too hard to guess how the little shits got the way they are. Still, Jesus, please. I don't ever want to have to live with people like this.

Every weekend. Seriously.

Usually, the first day of my weekend is packed with activity. There's always dinner eaten out, and fun to be had, maybe some drinks at the local drinking establishment, maybe a movie. It's festive, because it my day off! And days off are fun!

Then comes the second day off. And you know, here is where I am torn. Because there's stuff that needs to get done. There are fruits and vegetables to be purchased. I should wash the salt off that new car. Dishes. Garbage. You know, stuff that's been building up for the entire week. But on the other hand ... I know that in order to function properly, my brain needs some alone time. I have to turn off all the lights and decompress. Let my mind "run around in the yard," so to speak. If there's one thing I've learned so far in life, it's that this kind of decompression is essential to both my physical and mental health. Ideally, this will take up an entire day.

So what I usually end up doing is some kind of compromise, where I tell myself I will accomplish a small list of things after spending the bulk of the day zoning out. This doesn't work. The very essence of decompressing involves establishing a lack of obligation. When I try to combine the two, I end up feeling a certain level of guilt, while still very little gets done.

Back around 1999 or 2000, I had my hours cut at work in such a way that I was off Friday-Sunday every week. Most of my co-workers grimaced at their new schedules. I was overjoyed. One of the best days of my life happened on one of these newly free Fridays, when I had some dental work done, then wandered around downtown under the influence of Lortab. Everything was soft and beautiful. I walked out onto the pier where I helped a little kid reel in an enormous steelhead. He strapped the fish, which was almost as big as he was, to his bike and peddled off. Then I walked back to Superior Street where a tremedously drunk man tried to get me to take a swig off his plastic liter bottle of Silver Wolf vodka. When I refused, he wiped the mouth of it off in his bare armpit. When I refused again, he asked me if I thought my dad was going to find out. (I was in my late 20s at the time.) Eventually he told me all about the "little squeakies" that crawl out of the sewer sometimes. I rode the bus home and drew a comic about it. See? This is the kind of day that makes it possible for me to deal with all the mundane bullshit of life. You can't have that kind of a day when you're thinking about getting your oil changed.

I wish I could just work four 10-hour days per week. Better yet, three 12-hour days. Jesus, not so long ago I was making do with one day off per week. I must be going soft.

Or maybe finally getting back to normal.

So, last week I had the stomach flu. This week I have a bad head cold. And I hear that some people I know currently have the flu-flu. You know, the one that makes you sniffly, achey and dizzy right before it kills you.

What do you think are my odds of scoring a viral hat trick before all is said and done?

OK, so I got a new car. This winter was sheer murder on the Hedgehog, which was becoming nothing short of a death trap. When both headlights spontaneously extinguished on my ride home one night last week, I decided that I didn't enjoy driving a 13-year-old car anymore. Despite my adversity to car payments, it was time for me to trade up to something a little more fitting to my station in life. So I went to the car store and bought a 2007 Focus.

I'm not including a photo of it with this post because its covered with salt and sludge right now and besides, it's just a Focus like any other. You can Google it if you don't know what one looks like. It's the SE model. The 4-door coupe. Black. OK, it's this.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that the factory-installed CD player in the car also plays mp3 CDs, and this is going to allow me to embark on my nerdiest project yet. So far I've only made one mp3 CD -- a mix of 9 hours of songs I like, intended to be played on random. But this got me to thinking.

Nine hours of random songs that you've pre-approved is like the best radio station imaginable. You never hear anything you hate, but if you do hear a song you're not in the mood for, you can veto it. There are no commercials. No annoying DJ's voice. But unlike a standard mix tape or disc, it's completely unpredictable and you can listen to it many, many times before you get sick of it.

So what if I not only had one of these CDs, but actually filled the CD holder on my visor with these "stations" to create a visor lined with "presets" if you will. Some would have upbeat songs, some would have slow songs. Some might rock hard, some might just groove. Maybe one would be just for rainy days. There would definitely be one for driving in the dark along a lonely road and possibly getting abducted by Sasquatch.

If you need me, I'll be in one of two places: crouched over my computer making yet another "station," or halfway to Canada listening to god knows what next, while Bigfoot rides shotgun.

Yes, that's right ladies and jackholes. As of today, it's been five years since I started to subject the entire internet to the misfiring neurons, unfinished screenplays, and mewing cartoon cats fighting for attention inside my constantly dehydrated head. I figured there was a demand, since about 20 people a day back then would ask me what I was laughing at, and would look both disturbed and disappointed when I would close my eyes and mutter, "Nothing."

Since then, the site has gone through a name change, multiple upgrades, and countless identity crises. I've thought about giving it up many, many times. Each time, I just can't do it. Because of you, people! I have a very short attention span for all of the various projects and experiments I do, but that's because so few of them involve other people. I picture us all in a shoddy tent somewhere up in the mountains, pretending to herd sheep or fly-fish while we're actually falling deeper and deeper in love, me wearing a cowboy hat and little else, screaming, "I wish I knew how to quit you!"

Just take it easy on the Ambien, kids, or you'll take this blog along with you.

I don't like retrospects that much (the flashback episodes were always the worst in 80s sitcoms) so I'm not going to look back right now. And I wish I had some grand plans for the future of this blog, but I don't, other than my current experiment with keeping it commentless for awhile. I guess I'm just living in the present.

Right now, I'm blogging because it is fun. And that's about all there is to it.

Someone needs to tell the Waste Management company that, while I enjoy using their garbage cans and recycling bins for ghetto-sledding and occasionally brewing up a wopatusi, I am not one of their customers. So they should probably stop dropping off new disposal bins here.

Oh, wait. Somebody DID tell Waste Management that. Yet, the continue to line the curb with brand-new refuse containers. First, there was a new garbage can in the alley, and when, after about four weeks, they were convinced that it didn't belong here, they picked it up. The next day there was a new recycling can in front of the house. That lasted for maybe a week before it was removed, and now there's a new one again.

I'm tempted to just start using them and see what happens. But I think the whole thing is just some kind of scam. Like the moment a single banana peel lands in one of those cans, bills will start suddenly appearing as well.

The worst part is that the legitimate garbage company is getting confused about whether or not they still should pick up the trash. They call to complain about the other company's cans on the property, and I just noticed that last week they actually didn't pick up the trash at all.

Oh, well. At least it's pissing off the neighbors, who can't stand it when the recycling bin remains on the curb for a few hours after pickup, let alone for weeks. Sorry, folks, but it ain't mine.

And all those beer bottles inside must belong to some frat boy.

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When you're sitting in the dark watching a horror movie and suddenly a pair of great horned owls start their mating ritual right outside your window ... that will scare the snot out of you.

Also: owls are really loud and absolutely huge. I guess I didn't really know that.

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One day when I was about 6, the power went out just as my brother began bottling some beer he had made in a stone crock that used to belong to our grandmother. We lit candles, and someone started playing 78s from the 1920s on the old wind-up Victrola. I sat on the floor next to my brother, transfixed, watching the amber liquid rise up out of the crock through the clear tubing, curlicuing around until it reached the pressure valve he used to slowly deposit it in each bottle. The kitchen smelled like vanilla and honey, and the lights didn't come back on for the rest of the night.

That was a good day.

When I was 10, an elderly Finnish man -- some kind of relative removed two or three times by marriage -- made me a challenge after watching me chop wood at our cabin. He bet me that I would not be able to find a log that he could not split in "one shot." I rollled my eyes. How old was this guy, 90? 100? Well, probably more like 75, but still.

I found a log that I knew I probably wouldn't be able to split at all. It was too green and too long. "Bam! One shot!" he yelled as it exploded under the axe. I found a gnarley log with a lot of knots in it. "Bam! One shot!" Suddenly I knew this old codger was serious.

I ran around trying to find every butt-ugly log I could get my hands on. Some weren't even sawed flat on top. Some still had limbs attached. Some were two feet long. It didn't matter. "Bam! One shot!" I asked him how he did it, begged him to tell me the secret. He just smiled, handed me the axe, and walked away.

That was a good day.

Once when I was 13, I laid on my unmade bed looking up at the bare bulb on the ceiling and listening to my parents and their guests downstairs. I started to get really bored and bothered by my surroundings. So I made my bed, cleaned up all of my junk, and vacuumed the floor.

Then I went down into basement and found a large area-rug, dragged it up to my room, and vacuumed that. I found an old coffee table down there and a lamp, too. So I cleaned those up and brought them to my room as well. At one point my mom asked me what I was up to and I said, "Cleaning my room," but nothing more than that.

When I got my room looking how I wanted it, I got on my bike and rode to the newsstand where I bought a big stack of comic books and a bag of licorice. I went back home where I spread my bounty out on my coffee table. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and worked my way through all of the comic books and all of the licorice. It took a long time -- maybe a couple of days -- for anyone in my family to discover what I'd done.

That was a good day.

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This afternoon, I said two things that later made me laugh. Not the smiling, roaring laugh I usually do, but more of a sneer accompanied by a choppy exhale.

The first was: "I feel like winter is over."

The second was: "I've ridden the bus a few times lately. I wish I could ride it to work every day."

An hour later it started raining. In January. In Minnesota. Shortly after that, the entire world seemed like a frozen-over hell. I tried walking out to my car where I'd forgotten my phone, and almost fell four times in the process. Letter carriers were coming in rubbing their temples and muttering profanities. I started wondering if the bad weather would let up before it was time for me to go home.

Nope. Not at all.

The thing is, the block I live on is very hard to access when the weather is the least bit inclement. Sure, you can get near it, but there's nowhere to park down there. Whenever there's a blizzard, I usually end up stowing my car in a ramp about a mile away and walking home. In the ice, however? I seriously did not want to walk up the hill when it was covered with a quarter-inch sheet of ice. For that matter, I didn't want to drive on the ice, either. And I seriously didn't want to have a knuckle-whitening ride that ended with me ditching my car somewhere a mile away and scrambling the rest of the way home, only to reverse the process in worse conditions tomorrow.

So I called a cab.

I asked them if they could pick me up at the post office, and the dispatcher said, "Well...they could try..." I asked if the gas station a block away would be better, and she said it definitely would.

"OK," I said. "I'll walk to the gas station and meet the cab there."

"You have to be very, very, careful," the dispatcher said. "Seriously. OK? The sidewalks are terribly dangerous. Be careful." I told her that I'd be careful. I was. And I had to be.

When the driver picked me up, he said that a lot of other drivers had gone home and that some of the other cab companies had pulled all of their cabs off the road. "I don't stop driving until they make me," he said. He got me within a block and a half of my house, and I tipped him well. "Why don't you live closer to where you work?" he asked. I shrugged.

Now tomorrow I have to take the bus to work, which I wouldn't mind at all under ideal conditions. Like maybe if it would get me there anywhere near my start time.

Oh, well. I'm lucky to be alive.

It's something anybody can do, but also something I've done more than anyone I know -- locking my keys in my car. My fragile and delicate mind can't handle more than two things at a time. In this case, I had to disconnect my iPod from the radio, grab my bag off the passenger seat, and take the keys out of the ignition. I got two of them right. The last, I forgot. Two out of three ain't bad, but in this case it was freaking horrible.

Especially when the temperature outside is about negative one-hundred. First I tried doing the obvious thing: using the eff word. It didn't work, even when I used it out loud. I tried in vain to get back into the car somehow. Then I tried getting into the house without a key. No luck. I called the landlord, but he apparantly conks out sometime during Eyewitness News at 10, so there was no answer.

This left one option: to walk to Burrito Union and wait for my girlfriend, who wasn't due home for another two hours.

There's something odd about going to a bar when you don't want to. I mean, I'll drink good beer whenever, and Burrito Union serves Fitger's beer which is among the best. But generally, I prefer to drink at home while playing records or watching VH1 Classic. I don't always want to hang out by myself at the corner pub listening to Tim Nelson jerk off all over his guitar while some Granola freestyles about MySpace. Not that the hippie-hop isn't good -- it is. But I planned on wearing flannel pants by now and holding a warm internet on my lap.

Instead I'm paging through the Reader Weekly wondering how they can exist by selling ads only to themselves, while alternately jotting down this post on a stray piece of junk mail.

I can't help but think about what might have happened if I hadn't had anyone to let me in. What do stupid people without girlfriends do when they lock themselves out in sub-zero temperatures? Get a hotel room? Die?

I'm glad I don't know.

Knock wood.

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I'm starting a photoblog.

It doesn't look exactly how I want it to yet, and I still have some tweaking to do, but here it is if you want to look at the two pictures that are there so far.

For the past week or so, I've been trying to explain, both in my head and out loud to friends, why I need a photoblog in addition to my regular blog and in addition to my Flickr account. It's been difficult to articulate, but it's something I understand and need. I'll try here to spell it out (for myself more than for you, actually), but don't be surprised if I fail.

WARNING: INARTICULATE GEEKY WORDINESS AHEAD

Continue reading "Photoblog" »

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On the rare occasions that I allow someone to freely roam about my house, I always try to impress upon them that anything they might decide to consume is almost certainly past its expiration date. They always make a sour face and attempt to wave me off, and that is when I sit them down, grab their shoulders, and look them straight in the eye.

"While you are in my apartment, if you put anything in your mouth without being very sure of its purchase date, chances are pretty good that you will end up in the emergency room."

My inability to keep up with expiration dates, freshness dates, purchase-before dates, and good until dates astounds me. It seems that I do everything that I can. I buy food in small quantities, even though all food seems to packaged with large families in mind. (Seriously, do you think that I personally need EIGHT bratwursts? Even if I wanted to personally eat all eight of those things before they expired, do you really think that I should?) Whenever I open something like a jar of pasta sauce, I write the date that I opened it on the jar lid. Occassionally, I've conducted small purges where I throw away the expired things I find. None of it matters. It's only a matter of time before we're right back where we started.

A few days ago Christa was making bread when she asked me if I had any baking powder. I said sure, found the baking powder in the pantry, and checked the expiration date.

February, 1998

"Well, honey, the good news is that I have baking powder. The bad news is that it expired when you were in college."

While I didn't check before throwing it away, I'm quite certain that there was exactly one tablespoon of baking powder missing from the can. That can has been with me through three moves. I could have thrown it away at any time, but instead, I packed it up, moved it to the new place, unpacked it, and reshelved it.

Suffice to say, I don't bake things.

In case you're wondering, I managed to find another can of baking powder in the pantry, and this one didn't even have a date on it. Christa tried it.

The bread turned out fantastic.

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The little girl had a staring problem to begin with. Something about me attracted her interest, so she was already gawking when I opened up the carton of eggs to make sure that none of them were broken. When she saw the eggs -- or rather the color of the eggs -- her eyes and mouth expanded to seven times their normal size.

"Momma! Did you know that eggs can be brown?" she asked her mother, who responded by practically jerking the little girl's arm right off her body, effectively saying while it might seem interesting that eggs can be brown and healthy, in this family we prefer our eggs white and plasticy. And while we're on the subject, have you started puberty yet? I don't care if you haven't finished kindergarten. We're gonna need to double your intake of bovine growth hormone-enriched milk immediately!

Christa calls me a hippie, which is ridiculous in the first place, and in the second place is like Weird Al calling Milhouse from the Simpsons a nerd. Sure, my shopping basket is usually half-filled with free-range, crunchy organic nuggets, but the other half is filled with what one of my blog commenters called "negative-nutritious grocery product...like anti-matter for the body." Besides, she ran on the cross-country team in high school and constantly wears a wool cap, so there.

From what I can gather, Christa's definition of "hippie" is someone who doesn't work at Wells Fargo, doesn't wear pleated Dockers, doesn't shut down all aspects of life to watch football all Sunday, and doesn't consider Applebee's to be a great place to take a date and/or meet up with friends for drinks. Personally, I wouldn't call this kind of person a hippie; I'd simply call them "normal" or maybe a "non-douchebag." In this way, we are a good match.

When I was a kid, there were two practically synonymous words that my parents used, that each described people of a dubious nature: one was "hoods" and the other was "hippies." Hoods were dirty people with long hair who rode motorcycles. Hippies were the same people, only they rode in VWs or travelled on foot. Both "smoked dope." I didn't know what that meant.

The first time Christa accused me of being a hippie, I was appalled. She pointed out my organic eggs. The "hippies" I know don't even eat eggs, I said, real hippies don't even eat geletin...real hippies don't even eat honey. Then I called her a jock. She practically choked on her own Gatorade.

I guess that among athletic types, calling someone a 'jock' is a lot like calling a mildly healthy eater/somewhat regular recycler a 'hippie.' These are extremes that you don't want to subscribe to.

While I might choose to brush my teeth with non-fluoride toothpaste and while I might choose to wear man-sandals, she runs every day and consistently wears mesh. And yet, while we both love to drink strawberry Fanta and watch TiVo, we also sometimes munch on Clif bars as we trod down the Superior Hiking Trail.

More than all of this, we both like coffee and the internet. I guess, more than anything, we're just geeky bloggers.

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It's 3am on Christmas Eve, and this woman at Mickey's Diner in St. Paul is getting me down. She's 50ish, wearing long, gold ribbons in her hair, and she's fancily dressed in black velvet with a white faux fur coat. Also, she's alone. And also, she's three sheets to the wind.

I try to focus on the menu, but I can't. Slumped at the bar, she talks to herself. When she stands to hang up her coat, I look away, but watch her in the mirror as she fumbles with it, hanging and re-hanging it on different hooks, seven or eight times, before finally persuading it to stay put. The whole process makes me want to cry.

When I give my order to the waitress -- coffee and a one-eyed jack -- I'm barely paying attention, distracted by the thought of this woman and what her story might be. "I can't find my keys..." she says to no one, digging in her purse, forgetting her keys when she finds her lipstick, which she applies until the radio begins to play "Feliz Navidad," which she sings and dances to until it is finished. It's her night, I decide. She's celebrating.

I see her husband dying on Christmas Eve seven years ago or maybe more. He, the one true love of her life. She just wakes up and he's gone. And everyone was terrific at first when the grief was fresh, bringing over food and making sure she was OK, but people tire of that sort of thing pretty quickly. Now, faced with a dark house and disturbing memories, she's made Christmas Eve into her own special night. She's been out on the town, carousing, though all night just like right now, no one paid much attention. Tomorrow she'll be haunted by the demons of Headache, Nausea and Emptiness. Merry Christmas indeed.

Is it the smell of hash browns on the grill that make her wrinkle her nose in disgust? Or has she caught a few words from the conversation between the two college girls on my left? Making out and hooking up, parties and other points of bragging rights among young people with low self-esteem. These two women -- the one talking loudly about her latest exploits, the other sadly swaying to the tinny Christmas music -- two women on opposite ends of the same spectrum of experience.

She was young once, too, this Christmas queen in her gold ribbons, and you can see the attractiveness in the bones of her face, her taste in clothes. The boys turned their heads when she walked into a room, and it was something she took for granted, a part of her happiness she thought would be there forever. But nothing is forever. And here she sits, alone and drunk in her party clothes, in a cheap diner on Christmas Eve.

My girlfriend, not entirely aware of all these thoughts in my head, rises and walks over to get a key for the bathroom, when the woman speaks to her, saying, "What're you, Ugly Betty? You might be actually cute if you weren't wearing that hat." At this, Christa laughs heartily.

And here is where I finally realize that all of this history, all of this sadness, is entirely in my own head. We are two-thirds of the way to Rochester and it's three in the morning. For the past hour, I've been listening to the fuzzy AM car radio fade in and out while watching the lines on the highway dash by. I don't know this woman at all.

She probably started out at a Christmas party and ended up here via three or four bars, and that isn't anything I haven't done many times over. Even this is speculation.

By the time my sandwich arrives, I'm feeling much better. There's still the rest of the drive to Rochester ahead, but I'm refueling, re-energizing, and best of all, no longer randomly saddened.

It's times like this that make me realize what a touchy thing the brain is.

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I often wonder why it is that I am so polite. I'm not bragging. It's nothing special to be polite, or at least it shouldn't be. Politeness is supposed to be one of those things you take for granted. Unfortunately, it's the exception rather than the rule.

Tonight as I walked into Subway, I politely thought about how cool the woman's jacket in front of me was -- a shiny satin jacket with the Pancho Villa logo on the back. Then I got a little closer. And that was when I started to hate humanity.

"What kind of cheese do you want?" the sandwich artist asked. Now, I've personally seen this question throw many people into fits of confusion. There are only three types of cheese at Subway, but for some reason people get surprised that they have a choice. This woman responded to the question in the only way she saw fit. She pulled out her cell phone and called a friend.

OK, OK. The sandwich was for her friend. But you'd think that all of this would have been worked out beforehand, or at least that she would have improvised. She didn't. Even when the friend didn't answer. No, she left a message. And then she said, "Can you make my sandwich while we wait for my friend to call back?"

I wanted to get her name and address, wait for her to get pregnant and give birth, and then punch her newly born child in the face.

In retrospect, however, I realize that this is my fault. It is my fault and it is your fault. Confronted with this situation, we're supposed to say, "Excuse, me, but you have no idea how rude you're being right now." It's like that scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where Spock gives that kid on the bus with the boombox the Vulcan Nerve Pinch and everyone applauds. Everyone's thinking the same thing, but nobody wants to act on it.

Instead, I just sucked it up and dealt with it. The sandwich artist did the same, because that's his job. Then he was extra nice to me, recognizing me as a regular.

The friend never did call back. When it became clear that she could not hold up the line any longer without being absolutely ridiculous, she finally decided (appropriately) on the white American.

In all, I wonder if my life is better for putting up with the douchebags of the world, or if I'd get more satisfaction out of confronting them. I've done both, and yet, I'm still not sure.

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Every day, I get out of bed and put my T-shirt on backward.

Seriously. Every day. I'm not exaggerating. Most of the time, I look at the tag first, pull it over my head in such a way that I think the tag will be in the back, and then realize it's on backward. Other times, I just leave it to random chance, just pulling it over my head without looking. You'd think that would result in me putting my shirt on correctly around 50% of the time. It doesn't. I always put my shirt on backward.

Some days, I don't even notice. Some days, around 8 or 9pm, I'll realize that my neck feels a little weird. Then I'll look down and see that once again my shirt is on backward.

This has been going on a long time. I think it was on my third day of high school that someone pointed out my backward shirt to me, which was pretty embarrassing because that shirt actually had a graphic on the front of it. I guess I never noticed that the shirt that formerly said something suddenly said nothing. Someone had to tell me about it so that I could correct it.

It's pretty disheartening to realize that I'm nearly incapable of mastering something so complicated and technical as a T-shirt. I mean if I start my day with that kind of failure, what promise can the rest of the day possibly hold?

Maybe I should start wearing button-ups. Oh, god, on second thought, that could be seriously embarrassing.

Maybe I'll just stay in bed all the time. Shirtless. And happy.

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I'm always skeptical whenever I hear about someone being "ahead of their time." Usually, whenever some jagoff uses this phrase, it comes along with a sophomoric attempt to pursuade everyone that they are truly the first person to ever really understand Jack Kerouac. Or that Kurt Cobain killed himself because he didn't have any fans like the kind of fan you would have been, if only you hadn't been five years old at the time. It's one of those phrases that sticks in my craw, and so I almost never use it.

But when I talk about this one kid I went to junior high with -- Larry H. -- I have to use that phrase and many others like it.

Larry didn't have many friends. Sorry, Larry if you're reading this, but you didn't. In a school where each morning all of the girls awoke at 4am to thoroughly Aquanet themselves into perfection, and the boys slathered palmfuls of Dippity-Doo into their spiky mullets before interpreting the name of Brut Splash-on a little too liberally, Larry let his natural hair grease plaster his locks into submission. He wore out-of-style clothes, and didn't seem to like any of the cool things everyone else thought were so awesome. I doubt he owned a single Def Leppard album. It was no wonder that nobody wanted to hang out with him.

Still, none of this ever seemed to bother Larry at all.

I'm pretty sure that some of my classmates might have suspected that Larry was actually cool, because I know that I did. I noticed the first clue in social studies class, where Larry sat a few seats away from me. I kept my papers in plain, cheap folders from Kmart. Some of the other kids used folders decorated with unicorns or with the face of Janet Jackson or whatever. A lot of kids used Trapper Keepers. Larry used the empty sleeve of a Beetles album.

And really, I should have become friends with Larry right then and there. But I couldn't. In fact, it didn't even occur to me. His coolness was something I could only sense, but never actually see, like a creature from another dimension -- totally outside my realm.

A few weeks later in another class, Larry offhandedly mentioned that his brother played in a country & western band, and that sometimes he would sit in and play with them during gigs. Gigs in bars. You'd think this would have immediately given him some damn fine street cred, but I suspect that those words "country & western" spoiled everything. Among that crowd, liking country & western was like eating broccoli ice cream or biting the bubbles in the bathtub. Clearly something that only mental defectives could enjoy.

The best thing that I ever witnessed Larry do was when I was in the washroom while some other kids were bullying a 7th grader. Larry walked in, carrying his harmonica, and one of the bullies grabbed him and said, "Play your harmonica!" Larry shrugged and began to play. Soon the washroom was full of boys, shouting and clapping along. Someone came in and asked what was going on, and someone else shouted, "We're having a hoedown!" Eventually the bell rang and the hoedown came to an end.

At the end of that year, Larry disappeared and I never saw him again. I guess his family must have moved, maybe across town, or maybe to Austrailia for all I know. What I do know is that one day, when I was perhaps 25, Larry H. popped into my head and I suddenly, spontaneously realized that he was cool.

It kind of blew my mind.

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Today I am 35.

Sometimes I wonder how old I will be when I stop appreciating birthdays. I think it will probably be the same age I am when I stop appreciating jokes about farts and buttholes, which is to say about 250 years old.

Despite what they insinuate on TV, being in your 30s is fantastic for many reasons, but the thing I like most is what I like to think of as the Three Principals of Bullshit Reduction.

1. More than ever before in your life, you are able to recognize bullshit for what it is.
2. Upon seeing bullshit, you are old enough to have the courage to say, "This is bullshit."
3. You then avoid said bullshit, politely if possible, but not necessarily. Bullshit does not require politeness.

There's no way of knowing for sure, of course, but I'm willing to predict that by the time you reach 70 or 80, all willingness to endure any kind of bullshit is completely erased. Or rather, the bullshit just washes over you in a brown wave, then beads up and drips off just like in those old commercials for Turtle Wax. Or at least, I can only hope that's the case.

Throughout life, the BS just keeps getting thicker and thicker. And any sane person will tell you that there's no way to avoid it.

Attitude. That's the secret of life.

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Today the Duluth News-Tribune ran a story about people who illegally raise chickens right in the city. When I was a kid, nearly everyone in our neighborhood (well, everyone except my family) raised chickens as well as ducks, geese and turkeys. We didn't live in the country by any stretch of the imagination. People just built chicken coops in their backyards, filled a couple of kiddie pools for the ducks to play in, and feasted on delicious organic eggs every morning.

Occasionally when they desired an evening meal, they'd head over to the shed and grab a hatchet.

The people who lived on my block didn't like the government much, and hated being told what to do. If they wanted to keep chickens, they'd keep chickens. Likewise, they didn't like being told where to park. Our block was a one-way street with parking allowed only on one side. At some point, someone decided that it should be a two-way street and that we should be able to park on both sides. So they did the natural thing and took down the signs.

There was a period of about three or four years where the authorities and my neighbors went back and forth. Signs would go up and immediately be taken down. Cops would show up randomly and ticket everyone who was parked illegally. But usually, you could just drive in either direction and park wherever you wanted because, well, how was anyone supposed to know what the rules were when there were no signs telling you?

Eventually, the city put up stop signs at both ends of the block and alternate-side parking signs on both sides of the street. The criminals had won. Let that be a lesson to you, kids.

These days, that block is completely different. Half the houses have been torn down and replaced with brand-new ones. All of the families who lived in the old, falling down houses have either moved on or died off. It's a nicer neighborhood now, younger and more respectable. There are still a few rotten old crackhouses left, but just by looking at them you can tell they're not long for this world. Soon they'll be bulldozed to make way for new developments, which will be purchased by young couples with little kids.

I wonder if any of them will raise chickens. I doubt it.

At least I hope they appreciate the two-way street.

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I can't tell you how excited I am about the summons I received yesterday to serve on a federal jury. I got one about a year ago informing me that I would be on call for a whole year, and now I guess I'm on call for a couple of months.

Truthfully, though, I have mixed feelings. While I do want to serve, I have always held that I personally would never want to be tried by a jury of my "peers." Not to sound snobbish or anything, but have you spoken with the average citizen lately? No? Here's a sociological experiment for you: Spend a little time hanging out in the snowblower aisle at Home Depot, and just eavesdrop for five or ten minutes. Now, would you want any of those jackholes deciding whether or not you're going to do time in prison? For that matter, would you want me making that decision? I didn't think so.

Less terrifying but more headache-inducing is the thought of deciding someone else's fate along with 11 other mouthbreathers you might see peeling back the bun and inspecting their slider at White Castle. I've seen enough Matlock to know exactly who's on those juries. The businessman who thinks the whole thing is cut-and-dry (guilty-as-charged!) and just wants to get back to work. The elderly black lady who spends the whole time knitting and slowly shaking her head. The middle-class housewife who's too timid to give her opinion. The guy in the red flannel shirt, who at the end of the trial we find out is actually the killer!

These concerns dampen but don't nullify my enthusiasm. As I said, I am excited to serve. Mainly because I'm the type of person who likes to be in on things. I like to know all the details. The story behind the story. And I enjoy being a good citizen.

The $40 per day, and $.97 milage, though, not to mention the chance to eat in the courthouse cafeteria, that's the sweet part of the deal.

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I'm not going to pretend that I was in a good mood today. After cramming two hard-boiled eggs down my gullet, and screaming at least 15 eff-words in regards to the second winter storm warning this week, I plunged out into the world in full hatred of Duluth, the people of Duluth, and the entire season of winter, not to mention you, your mother, your sister, and your filthy, dirty genitals.

After driving 15-20mph on the freeway among people who find it prudent to keep their headlights off and to constantly ride the brake while driving in zero visibility on a slippery surface, I arrived at work for the second day of what I like to call NaMaProMo, or National Mail Processing Month. It's a month that I'm participating in! There are a few simple rules to NaMaProMo, which are kind of like the rules of chess: easy to learn but hard to master.

» I will process -- by hand -- every single oversized Priority Mail™ parcel in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin during this Christmas season.

» Every day, I will work as long as it takes to do my job. I will not leave until it is finished.

» From now until Christmas, I will have only two days off. They will not adjoin.

» Nearly every clause in the contract my union negotiated for me will be suspended during this month. I will have veritably no rights.

FUN! Anyway, I made it to work unscathed (for the first time this week) where I proceeded to work my ass off and consume not only lunch, but also dinner, out of the vending machine, all the while I had no idea whether or not I was going to be able to make it home after work, because of the second raging snowstorm within three days. After weighing all of my options (one of which included walking the 4.5 miles home in the middle of the street in dark clothing), I actually started to think about the inevitable, which was renting a room at the Motel 6 across the street from the sewer plant so that I could easily get right back to work the next day.

Luckily, the storm let up and after shoveling out my Ford Escort, which was completey buried except for a small swath of fluorescent green, I was able to drive to my favorite free parking ramp, located only a mile from my home. And even luckier than that, the ramp is attached to one of my favorite bars. My old lady, who had the relative luxury of walking 2-1/2 miles to work, met me there.

I like bars pretty much on any given day of the year, but there is something about a snow day that