it's over. move to somnia.

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I Have the Same Name as a Blues Guitarist: A Mundane Headline for a Cold Medicine High

That's all. If I liked the blues it would be special, but I don't so it's not.

Oh, and as it's token testimonial time: Pseudoephedrine helped me get to work today. Now I know that much more about Humboldt County's water export policy. Thanks, modern medicine!
peachy as always, Mike at 8:22 PM

 
N.B.

No, I'm not depressed. Just kind of sickly. Of course, whenever I hear the word "sickly," I get a mental picture of a thin little boy sitting up in bed (and of course the beddings are some unpleasant color like pale yellow) in a damp room, waiting for Mummy to come and put a cool cloth to his forehead. The phone rings and the doctor (because fantasy doctors who don't make house calls at least have the compassion to call you at home) announces that the young boy has tuberculosis (but of course he calls it something antiquated like "consumption"). Picture, if you will, the illustrations from The Phantom Tollbooth if you need help conjuring the lad.

So I'm just a little sickly and discursive. Of course, "discursive" is an interesting word, too, being one of those crazy vowel-alternators: serene-serenity, divine-divinity, etc., only this time the spelling changes, too. Discourse. Discursive. Analogous to "pronunciation," which (I have learned from experience) is a hard word to tell somebody he's not saying right. (Go on, imagine it. Who's on first, eh?)

I'm sickly, I'm discursive, and I even approach being patronizing. At least my senior English teacher in high school made a point of explaining that the a is long when you're shopping and short when you're snotty.

But she didn't put it so succinctly.
peachy as always, Mike at 6:51 PM

 
Hell is for Telemarketers

I've always been introverted. Hands-down, no question. Lately, though, the fear of cold-calling people (one I thought I'd conquered) has been resurfacing. Yesterday at work I had to sit still and breathe slowly for a couple of minutes after just thinking about calling up the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office. All I needed was to find out whether the noise complaints they receive tend to cluster around certain locations. (They don't. I had to call three times to get that much.)

Yes, I grinned, swirling my cocktail as I surveyed my interlocutor, I research noise for a living. Couldn't you just lap it up? Hm-ha-ha. Hm-ha.

I also had to carefully write out all I was going to say, from "Hi, my name is..." to "Is there someone in your office I'd be able to speak to about this?", for fear of forgetting what I was saying and exposing whoever would receive this recitation to a prolonged silence as I weathered a blanking-out.

Much of the time I still fumble a bit before picking up the phone to call a friend. Some people demand a reason for being called. I can't imagine what it's like for those people whose job it is to call people all day and propose that the callee give money to the caller. I'd hate hate hate it, passionately. I used to feel bad for them, engage them a bit. Now, I wait long enough to hear what organization they're with, determine whether I legally owe that company a bill, and slam down the phone if not. People say that's better; it doesn't waste the caller's time if you're not interested.

But damned if spending the overwhelming majority of one's workday being rejected and harangued doesn't do something to a guy. And to think I still fear asking people for information that it is their job to provide.

Figure that!
peachy as always, Mike at 3:42 PM

 
IAQ (Infrequently, eh?)

Q. What's that grayish space off to the right?
A. That's the blog-distiller. All the funniest and most compelling posts to this site go over there for easy nav.

Q. It's empty, you know.
A. Well, you know what I'm going to say to that. Why not spend some time clipping your nails instead of rolling your eyes at my response?
peachy as always, Mike at 4:04 PM

 
CULTURAL RIGHT #1: The Right to Make Fun of Your Own

So we're sitting around, seven of us, as the credits to the Academy Awards scroll by, and somebody (OK, me) makes the suggestion that we can either watch the Barbara Walters Interviews or Queer as Folk. The latter is enthusiastically chosen.

It's 10 o'clock as the opening sequence begins. We comment thus:

[names have been changed to deny the speakers due recognition for their wit]

Gene: Hey, how 'bout that! It's starting right on time!
Ralph: To be more realistic, it should start ten minutes early or late.
Gene: You mean ten or twenty minutes late.
Jessica: If they really wanted to make it true-to-life, every once in a while it should just not appear when scheduled, with no explanation.
peachy as always, Mike at 3:00 PM

 
QuikFAQ

Q. What time is it?
A. 4:45.

Q. How much do I owe you?
A. $15.

Q. Will that be ATM or credit?
A. ATM, please.

Q. How does it look out there?
A. A little overcast.

Q. I'm sorry, what was that?
A. I said I like your jacket.

Q. Excuse me, which way is ___?
A. I don't know, I'm not from around here.

Q. How did you find this place?
A. Craigslist.

Q. What time is it now?
A. 4:57.

Q. Did you see what Gwyneth was wearing?
A. Yeah...and someone apparently slipped her a pair of gag binoculars. Of course, her head's the size of a coconut.
peachy as always, Mike at 8:01 PM

 
Tea

I am relaxed. I am at peace. I am able to focus on my work (excepting an occasional break to let the world know how I feel). I am productive.

Perhaps it's because my Oscar-viewing party last night was a success--intimate yet raucous, overlong though comfortable--and I feel confident about my bringing people together. Perhaps it's because (wonders!) I actually got to rest this weekend while still doing everything I wanted to do. Perhaps it's even because (oh, this may make me squirm someday) I have laughed heartily and hugged freely and talked with a number of friends I have for too long put off.

Or maybe it's just the tea. I love the tea. Earl Grey, you're a prince!
peachy as always, Mike at 7:29 PM

 
SPEAKING OF MUSIC...

OK, fine, I'll admit it: I like '80s music.

It was transformative experience this morning when I was listening to "Man, It's So Loud in Here" from They Night Be Giants' most recent album Mink Car (recently acquired, half price, shazam). The '80s aesthetic is great, but it took well into the '90s for the aesthetic (synthesizer, drum machine) to be divorced from those awful '80s bands that thought it up.

All right. I salute them for pioneering the style, but I still refuse to pretend I like OMD and Erasure. Their songs are crap, pure and simple. I have more respect for New Order, the Pet Shop Boys, and Depeche Mode, but it really took for bands that aren't '80s-linked (TMBG, the Magnetic Fields, and so on) to adopt the style that I now see how cool it can really be. They brought their own lyrical and melodic sense to the synthesizer frame and brought it home. Awesome, boy.
peachy as always, Mike at 1:42 PM

 
MUMBLING ABOUT POP HISTORY

So...back in 1993 or so, there was this movie, "So I Married an Axe Murderer," about lovable buffoon Mike Myers falling for lovable butcher Nancy Travis. On the soundtrack is a song by Suede, "My Insatiable One," a wistful rock song romance about a man pining for another man who is gone away somewhere. Oh, OK.

Now, the thing (yes, the THING!) is that "My Insatiable One" was a B-side to the single "The Drowners" from the album Suede, which also featured the song "Metal Mickey"...which is about a man falling in love with a butcher-lady. Wouldn't that have been a slightly more apt choice? Maybe I'm just too literal.

Just something that flashed through my mind on the way to work today.
peachy as always, Mike at 1:32 PM

 
I'm so excited. I'm having a couple of parties in the near future (my birthday's approaching...I like a big show), and I've only recently imagined I could do any good playing charming host.

OK, so, professionally, I'm a planner. Of sorts. (Urban. It's noble, it's important, it's...slow and methodical.) It never ceases to amuse those close to me that I call myself a planner yet have a terrible time trying to organize events. ("You mean, planning?" "Hey!") I can't decide on details; I'm not really predisposed to do one thing over another--I usually just don't care. It doesn't matter. It's small. Details bore me. I could never be a decorator. "So what? It's exposed drywall. You can draw on it. Look! It's fun! Where are you going?"

But now, I'm feeling energized. I'm going to create merriment. I'm going to bring people together. I'm going to put off calling the karaoke place just a little longer since I don't know exactly what to say. Phooey.
peachy as always, Mike at 7:55 PM

 
Over the past couple of days, I've been thinking about how long it will take me to find my true blog voice, my automatic register that will reflect my unique and charming personality. The more often I write, the quicker it should come, right? And what will it sound like when it does come? Will it be like my strident movie review of this past Monday? Will it be a quirky-breezy pastiche of thoughts, like last Thursday's reflection on consumer spending and changing inspiration? Will it be more like last Friday's nonsensical time-filler? Or will it be one of those tedious self-reflexive jobbers, overemploying hoity-toity affixes like meta- and -esque?

Maybe I could swipe from someone else's style. I could be Joan Didion and interrupt my recounting of St. Patrick's Day dinner with my father (during which he regaled me with stories of our East-Coast relatives' petty animosities) with something like

Q. What is Irish Alzheimer's?
A. You forget who you hate beyond the fifth generation.

and then continue apace in describing my evening, my discerning eye pointing out the significance of details otherwise taken for granted.

I could emulate another of my favorite authors, Pico Iyer, in treating everything as if I were a stranger in a strange land, with no moorings to speak of apart from a global community of those always on the go. The only catch is I am still living within a hundred miles of my birthplace, where my father still is, and I am not yet employed in a position with the elasticity to leave the Bay Area more often than three or four times a year. No, that's wrong. I just don't have my destinations straight.

I like to do things in threes, but another author escapes me now. Oh, wait! I’ll be Lorrie Moore and dwell on the tiny happinesses and tinier (but more numerous) sadnesses of my life as an ordinary person without great ambition. I will sigh, but privately. Then again, privacy is not the purpose of blogging.

Let’s see, shall we?
peachy as always, Mike at 12:52 PM

 
Current events: Saw A Beautiful Mind on Friday and any cynicism I'd ever discarded about Hollywood films jockeying for the Academy Awards suddenly came rushing back to me. After the first ten minutes, I was ready to leave. Every, every line of dialogue was written and enunciated as if it were a commanding speech. ("I need to discover something original!")

There was no surprise in discovering the man was delusional. Every plot point was telegraphed, save for the tacking-on of the "and then, 40 years later" Nobel Prize denouement. (Hey, didn't I already suffer through A.I.?) And has there ever in recorded history been a woman as brazen as Jennifer Connelly's character? Sure you root for her, but the "based on a true story" claim has already been pretty laughable without imagining a female student (at Princeton in the 1950s? what?) had that kind of power.

Somebody please explain why Russell Crowe's acting is being hailed and showered with awards. Is it hard to avoid eye contact, mumble, and stare blankly when you're not crying? (Did I accidentally stumble into I Am Sam?) And as for the traveling accent: I'm not an expert on schizophrenia, but I don't recall him having adopted the personalities of a Southern gentleman and Scots highlander. (The "mountain man" accent at least approximated his West Virginia background.)

Now, I had always heard DreamWorks was supposedly a big gun in the special effects department. Great. Fine. Glowing numbers are pretty. Floating people are neat. But how hard is it to put "old makeup" on actors so it doesn't look like a gorilla was let loose in the props department and walloped the actors with putty? When the camera turned to Wifey at the Nobel Prize ceremony, I thought to myself, "Oh my goodness, he went crazy and embalmed Liz Taylor with peanut butter." Even the people behind Romy and Michele's High School Reunion did a better job, and all they had for a budget was twelve bucks and a tub of Crisco.

Bad movie. Big gaps. Laughable emotion. Time wasted.
peachy as always, Mike at 3:02 PM

 
OK, so I'm at work and the weekend is almost here, and I really need to get a few more things done before I can happily go home, but then I think...Blogger.

It reminds me of so long ago, back when I was in Chile (ah yes, tales of the Old Country) and there were posters up all over the place announcing (among the other delights of Nestle Savory (R) ice cream and its archnemesis Bresler) the Nogger Choc. I never tried it, I don't know what it was supposed to be, but it still inspired one of my co-expatriates to holler "NOGGER CHAWWWWG!" whenever she saw it.

Blogger Nogger Blogger Chogger Blog. Pollywog. Soak 'n sog. Alicia Rog. Frog on a log in the bog.

Sniff. Memories.
peachy as always, Mike at 6:58 PM

 
Lately I've been feeling the consumerism bug climbing up and around me, sticking its claws in my nostrils and mussing up my hair, trying to reach over and whisper in my ear (kind of hard, as it doesn't really have a neck). It's got a very seductive voice.

"You want an iMac. You love Macs. You're sick of Microsoft's domination of the market. You need expanded graphics capabilities. You want to work that Web thing. That thing you have sitting in your bedroom sounds like a pneumonic moose when you turn it on. Do you want to prolong its suffering like that?

"You want a keyboard. You used to study piano. What happened to that? You have no musical outlet. Your only creative outlet is that ridiculous improv class--and that cute guy who keeps pushing you up onstage is a conversational deadweight, so don't even think about trying to scam a date off him, you eager-beaver little heartbreaker. But good job, though, on dropping $125 on six paltry nights of instruction.

[The bug is a practiced flatterer, no?]

"You want a couch in your room. That German roommate of yours has a couch in his bedroom, and it's only half the size of yours. You want a full-size bed. Or a queen. (snicker) And you need to replace that hideous comforter. For the sake of snipe!"

[The bug is, unsurprisingly, good friends with the mythic snipe, that creature we all ditched our more gullible friends in pursuit of back in fifth grade.]

It's my fault. I fed the bug recently by re-reading "How the Yinch Stole Christmas," over on the Suck.com archives. Shopping is good for the soul! Yes!

A moment of silence for Suck, please. And for Filler.

At least the Filler torch is being carried on, in however verminous a way...Polly Esther (now the Rabbit) is blogging away at tinylittlepenis.com, pausing only on occasion to transform into Heather Havrilesky the Syndicated-ish NPR Fixture, an inspiring super-heroic alter ego.

Greed. Suck. Rodents. Sounds great together, doesn't it?
peachy as always, Mike at 11:07 PM

 
Having a bad day? Do something nice for yourself! Like maybe...turn your blog on and let the half-digested ideas flow!
peachy as always, Mike at 6:43 PM