Clearly, it's been a minute since I've written anything and rather than try to weave all of the things I've wanted to write about for the past two months into a rambling, expansive narrative that would whither and die by the second paragraph, I'm going to opt for a snapshot attack.
*ahem*
If you live in Indianapolis or are ever visiting (it really is a delightful city), please take the time to go to Taste on College Avenue for breakfast/brunch. Yes, it's trendy. Yes, the wait staff is clad predominantly in skinny jeans. Yes, idle hipsters linger over their meals on weekday mornings and wrestle with the New York Times crossword puzzle. Whatever. All of this and the decided lack of sensible parking options are more than worth negotiating for even just one delicious sip of their Spanish latte. What makes it Spanish? I have no idea. Condensed whole milk, espresso, and whipped cream have never struck me as particularly Iberian, but there you go. Seriously, this is the best coffee drink I've ever had. I would shame myself if I wrote honestly about the things I would do for a Spanish latte from Taste, so I'll pull my punches a little bit. I would slap my grandmother backhanded (the grandmother who's still with us) for a Spanish latte from Taste. That was me holding back. Use your imagination.
If you don't appreciate David Bowie, we probably wouldn't be very good friends. It's not that I'm a Bowie superfan - I probably only have ten or so Bowie songs on my iPod - but that I struggle to understand anyone who's not fascinated by Bowie's complete, all-encompassing strangeness...even if that fascination is only with Labyrinth David Bowie. My sister and I probably watched that movie 500 times as kids. Some of my friends' parents wouldn't allow them to watch it on the grounds that it was too "Satanic" (As if there's an acceptable level of Satanism?). I've never understood this. If, on the other hand, they didn't allow their children to watch Labyrinth on the grounds that David Bowie's pants are WAY too tight and you can literally see his cock and balls throughout the entire movie, I might be able to get behind their reasoning. I digress.
My most recent infatuation with Bowie is attached to the song "Modern Love." Firstly, I challenge you not to dance to this song if you hear it and are alone. Secondly, how has this not been covered yet? I'd bet $100 that a Killers cover of this song would be a top ten hit on college radio. Stone cold lock. Thirdly, over the opening chords of the song, there's a spoken word bit in the background in which Bowie says, "I know when to go out and when to stay in, get things done." I can't hear this and not crack up. His intonation suggests that he's trying to be cool and mysterious, but all I can imagine is Bowie on the phone with his buddies telling them he can't go out this evening. It wouldn't be responsible. He's got to balance the checkbook and do laundry. Maybe Friday.
Last October I moved back to my favorite neighborhood in Indianapolis after two years in a vinyl village located in a kid infested suburb of the city. I love kids, really. But any doubts I had with respect to whether or not I was mature enough to father any of my own at the present moment in my life were forcefully and undeniably quashed over the course of those two years. Some day, yes. Tomorrow the 8th of May, 2012? No fucking way.
Anyhow, my "favorite neighborhood," that of the Spanish latte, is a partially gentrified, liberal buffer between the north side of downtown Indianapolis and the gilded ghettos of Carmel, Indiana (infuriatingly pronounced 'Car-MEL' by some of the nouveau riche a little too taken with their zip code). There's a convenience store located within easy walking distance of my apartment that I sometimes go to when I only need a couple of things and don't want to drive to the supermarket. My first trip to this convenience store was a few weeks after I had moved into my new place and, although I was delighted to be back in my element, I wasn't totally in love quite yet. That all changed as soon as I walked into this store.
The place was packed and there weren't two people of the same race. One hitters were for sale right behind the bulletproof bubble in which the clerk was encased. The Indian proprietor was outside haggling with a guy in a white box truck over body piercing jewelry he was buying in bulk to sell in the store. A hand scrawled sign advertising adult movies on VHS (VHS?!) was taped to the bulletproof glass just above the one hitters. On the customer's side of the counter, there was a wicker basket full of bananas with a sign that said "Fresh Froot. .50".
It's not that any of these things comprise essential characteristics of That Which Makes Me Happy, but that taken as a whole, in their specific location (geographically and socially) they remind me of the neighborhood in which I grew up in Austin, Texas and how my mother often had to delicately explain to my sister and I what the movie titles posted on the marquee of the adult movie theater located near our home meant. "Well kids, when a man and woman love one another...". Basically, in a decidedly non white picket fence sort of way, I feel at home and I love it.
I had blood work done the other day and when I arrived to check in to the lab I was gruffly confronted by a large, black female nurse. She was short without being rude and had the air about her of someone who had to stick needles in peoples' arms all day long which is, of course, exactly what she had to do. After I'd checked in, the nurse started asking for information from a couple in the waiting room who had arrived before me. The nurse needed to know the couple's doctor's address, but they didn't know it (Who does?!) and this agitated the nurse. As the couple fumbled for their cell phones to try to find the address of the doctor online, the nurse huffed and said, "I'm jus gonna put mistle anus." Mistle anus. She said it like six times after that as she shushed the couple who were promising they could find it if she'd just give them a quick second. Mistle anus. Every time she said it I got closer and closer to losing my shit and I'd almost locked it up, but then I looked over at the only other person in the waiting room and her face was bright red and she was clearly biting the insides of her cheeks trying to keep from laughing every time the nurse said mistle anus. I had to put my head in my hands and stare at the floor and say over and over to myself in my head "Holocaust: millions died" to keep from falling over in peals of laughter. Mistle anus. Love it.
I was on a long run the other day and about midway through I passed a grandmother and her granddaughter feeding the ducks and geese along a canal. The granddaughter was at that age, probably four or five, where everything in life is fascinating and wonderful and not at all scary. She was dressed as a butterfly with wings and sequined shoes and slinky antennae and every time a duck ate the bread she'd tossed it she clapped and laughed and went back to her grandmother for more bread. The grandmother had an expression on her face as if she'd just taken a deeply satisfying breath and had nowhere to be except right there. She also was wearing butterfly wings and slinky antennae and seemed completely content to look ridiculous in the service of her granddaughter. Made my day and the rest of the run was cake.
Monday, May 07, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
The Ballad of Squad Zero
Most American guys of a certain age have, at one time or another, fantasized about being an unassailable, shit kicking badass as a member of an elite military unit. Think SEALs or Army Special Forces or Rangers (they lead the way) or Force Recon or, for the most fantastical of us all, Delta Force. There are a number of factors at play here, but being American, under 45 years of age, and having a penis seem to be the most consequential. Some combination of the movies Rambo, Top Gun, and Navy SEALs; GI Joe action figures; video games like Call of Duty and Splinter Cell; and a nearly pornographic American obsession with guns has conspired to lead many of us into thinking that, with the proper training, we could be clearing rooms, fast roping onto rooftops from a Blackhawk helicopter, and piloting Swimmer Delivery Vehicles under the hull of a ship at night to plant explosives.
I confess, I have not been immune to this fantasy. My senior year in high school I nearly caused both of my parents' heads to explode when I informed them that I had talked to the Navy and Marine Corps recruiters who camped out in the hallways of my school and inquired about enlisting with a guaranteed shot at BUDs or Scout/Sniper training. Thankfully, for both my parents and our nation's military, this momentary dalliance with alpha male super supremacy vanished when I was accepted to Baylor University (considerably less badass but minus any log carrying and plus many attractive women) and I joined the ranks of the 99.9% of the American male population who watch the Jason Bourne movies and then try to reconcile their ass kicking fantasies with the fact that they also shop at Banana Republic and just can't start their day without a latte from Starbucks.
Any doubt I had about whether I had made the right choice was wholly and incontrovertibly quashed my sophomore year at Baylor when a group of buddies and I decided to drive to a paintball place just outside of Dallas on a Saturday morning to put our close quarters combat skills to the test. Our genius plan was formulated over beers the previous evening as we had managed to convince ourselves that enough video game playing and action movie watching had somehow imbued us via osmosis with at least a functional knowledge of small squad combat maneuvers and important battlefield techniques like how not to get shot. We were going to be ringers on the paintball field.
Our band of brothers, which we jokingly came to call Squad Zero, was comprised of Aron, of Frogdog fame; Christian, a boy band good looking bartender; Stu, an intellectual communications major; Ted, an aloof guitar playing environmentalist type; Mike, think Brad Pitt from Ocean's Eleven; and myself.
Our first mistake became painfully apparent when we pulled into the parking lot of the paintball place in a cherry red Audi A4 and a beat up Honda Accord still dressed in the same duds we had worn to the bar the night before. We should have driven trucks and we should have changed. More specifically, we should have driven massive, lift kit equipped Ford trucks with gun racks and Ain't Skeerd stickers on their bumpers and changed into as much Real Tree camouflage as we could find at the local Wal-Mart. You know that scene in every White-Kid-Winds-Up-On-The-Wrong-Side-Of-Town movie when Chet or Margaret walks into the hip hop club and the DJ scratches the record to a halt as all of the thugged out black guys turn to stare? It was like that, except with Doomsday militia types and their warrior-to-be progeny and instead of a record scratching to a halt, the sounds of them loading their ridiculously equipped paintball guns ceased.
There was a momentary face off in the dirt parking lot as we were sized up by the regulars who were apparently there for training instead of fun. I'm pretty sure all six of us were wearing black and had on sunglasses. Aron was smoking a cigarette. Stu was bemused in the way an intellectual communications major would be but wisely kept his wisecracks to himself. Mike was wondering why he decided to come to Dallas with us instead of home with one of his many female options the night before. Ted looked terrified.
"Fuck it. Let's go," Aron snarled as he stamped out his cigarette butt on the ground. Not looking to see if any of us were following, he added, "Squad fucking Zero."
As we approached, the locals warily went back to loading their guns but kept one eye on us as we entered the pro shop and inquired about pricing and guns to rent. After the monetary details were hammered out and we were kitted up for the coming war with what I now know to be the paintball equivalent of 4-10 shotguns, the proprietors of the paintball facility asked for our skill level.
"What category are you boys in?"
We all stared back blankly.
"You know, at what level do y'all compete?"
We stared back blankly again and then started to look to one another for an answer.
"We're Squad Zero," I jokingly offered.
"I see," said the paintball guy as he scrawled something on a roster sheet.
In retrospect, he either thought we were a group of experienced paintballers drifting through town in search of a good fight like the plot to some sort of post modern western movie or, and this is much more likely, he realized we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into and took advantage of the opportunity to inject serious comedic relief into what otherwise a creepily serious afternoon of paintballing by assigning us to a team on which we would absolutely get our asses handed to us.
We stepped outside and began to load our paintball guns and adjust our masks as one of the referees called out that we'd begin in a few minutes. In the lull, some of the younger doomsdayers, probably twelve or thirteen years old, ventured up to us.
"Are y'all agg?"
"Agg?" Mike asked.
We again looked to one another searching for some sign that someone in our group had understood the question.
A word of advice: If ever you find yourself attempting something you've never done before, something like kayaking or rock climbing or lugeing or snake wrangling or paintballing, do not feign knowledge in the face of ignorance. Far better to profess ignorance and look silly momentarily than to play along and look silly for an entire afternoon. Hindsight.
"We're Squad fucking Zero," Aron retorted without looking up from loading his gun.
"Yeah, y'all are agg," one of the child soldiers responded.
Satisfied, they ran off to report to the others.
Stu piped up,"Dude, we don't even know what that means. What if that changes the rules or something or we wind up having to do some shit we don't know anything about? I don't want to unnecessarily get lit up by a bunch of rednecks if I don't have to. Those paintballs freaking hurt."
"Relax, dude," Aron responded. "Those kids were like ten. Squad Zero."
"Squad Zero," a few of us laughed back, overly confident that age precluded a person from being an absolute crack shot with a paintball gun.
The referee called out two teams of names and had us all follow him to the first field, a wooded but relatively small patch of land, and then quickly explained the rules. I don't really remember much about the rules now, but I do remember that Squad Zero was intact on one team, confident, excited, and ready to win glory on the field of battle. We were sort of like The Light Brigade well before The Charge of The Light Brigade.
The referee blew his whistle and the six of us rushed forward while everyone else on our team wisely dove for cover. Stu, Ted, Mike, and Christian were mowed down immediately. Aron and I found ourselves using three of our child teammates as human shields as we plunged to take cover behind a log.
"Holy fuck!" Aron yelled. "We should have come up with a better plan!"
Paintballs whizzed over our heads and popped loudly against the log in front of us as I meekly held my gun aloft and fired randomly without exposing myself.
"Alright," Aron said, "here's the plan: I'm gonna jump up and run to the next tree and you cover me. Squad Zero!"
Before I could dissuade Aron from this course of action, he sprang up from behind our log, made it two steps, and immediately succumbed to what I like to call The Machine Gun Dance. The Machine Gun Dance is a staple of every 80s military action movie in which some minion finds himself in Stallone or Schwarzenegger's crosshairs and, as he's riddled with bullets, maintains the standing position and sort of shakes all over.
Aron looked down at me when the firing had stopped and, covered in paint, yelled,"Medic!"
As he trudged off the field trying unsuccessfully to dodge more paintballs, a kid from the opposite team calmly walked around the log that had kept me in the game, looked down at me in a pitying way, and, as I cowered in the dirt, shot me in the knee.
"You're out!" the referee swooped in to yell.
Squad Zero after action report #1:
Enemies Killed: 0 (probably)
Life Expectancy After First Shots Were Fired: 1 minute
Casualty Rate: 100%
As Squad Zero reconvened on the losing side of a hugely lopsided loss, we realized that we had been assigned to a team essentially made up of clay pigeons. We were fodder for the more experienced players on the other side. To make matters worse, we were far and away the worst players on a team of bad players. I overheard the Vietnam vets on the other side coaching the child warriors on the finer points of coordinated movement and cover. One of the kids on our team wiped his nose on his sleeve. Aron lit a cigarette. Ted confessed that he didn't think he even fired his gun. I survived the longest by laying on my stomach behind a log.
"Follow me to the next field!" bellowed the referee.
The next field consisted of a makeshift plywood compound and a was shaped in a tight triangle with wooded areas on two sides. Squad Zero would be tasked with breaching the compound and eliminating all of its defenders. The 54th Massachusetts had a better chance of storming Ft. Wagner.
The referee blew his whistle and the chaos started all over again. There were probably twenty people on our team and we easily had sixty different ideas as to how best to breach the compound. Squad Zero was a squad in name only and all I remember is that none of us survived and the only thing I'm sure I hit was one of the walls of the compound.
Squad Zero After Action Report #2:
Enemies Killed: 1 or 2 (maybe...and by sheer luck)
Life Expectancy After First Shots Were Fired: 1 minute 30 seconds (best guess)
Casualty Rate: 100%
At this point, someone on the other team must have said something. Fighting us was like playing Call of Duty on the easiest setting and even utter, soul crushing dominance gets boring after a while. Plus, I suspect some of the more militant types really were using this Saturday paintball outing as preparation for when the Feds came knocking. Picking off liberal arts majors at will was probably immensely satisfying for them on a personal level, but it wasn't doing much to prepare them for the coming storm. The referee with the roster sheet made some changes.
We lost the nose wiper and a few others I can't remember and picked up a couple of surly ex military types. I shouldn't be so judgmental. The guys who came over to our team were amenable enough and they tried to give us a few pointers, but there's only so much you can teach when you're in the shit and I'm reasonably confident they were just as happy to let us draw fire while they went about the work of trying to actually win a game.
The next field we played on was 3/4 the size of a football field and had a densely wooded patch right in the middle of it. You couldn't even see the players on the other side when the whistle blew to start the match. After being quickly and unceremoniously eliminated in two successive campaigns, I convinced Christian to stay behind with me as everyone else charged headlong into the thicket. We would slowly creep up to the front after everyone was engaged and try to outflank the enemy.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I said to Christian right after the whistle blew and the rest of Squad Zero sprinted into the brush. "Let's hold up here and then try to outfl-"
*splat*
My field of view, previously occupied by Christian, was now an opaque pink hue, my mask covered in pink paint.
"Fuck," Christian muttered softly.
"You're Out!" the referee rushed in to inform me, as if I'd somehow missed the fact that a paintball had miraculously flown the field's entire seventy five yards to tag me right between the eyes.
I started to take off my mask so I could see my way off the field but was quickly scolded by the referee and then had to stumble my way off the field through the trees and over the uneven ground unable to see anything except the pink paint that served as a violent stamp of disapproval on my genius plan.
The rest of Squad Zero met their fate somewhere in the thicket.
Squad Zero After Action Report #3:
Enemies Killed: 3 (surely we were getting a little better, right?)
Life Expectancy After First Shots Were Fired: 30 seconds (my 5 seconds of survival brought down the average)
Casualty Rate: 94.4% (I think Stu lived through the ordeal)
By this time, Squad Zero was well and truly demoralized. It got even worse when one of the child soldiers from the other team came up to us at lunch and informed us that we were not, in fact, "agg". I'm still not entirely sure what "agg" means, but I'm guessing it doesn't involve cowering behind logs, getting shot first in every match, and yelling "Medic!" every time you get hit with a paintball.
The last match of the day, mercifully, took place on a field occupied by inflatable trapezoids and pyramids. Many of the militia types and child warriors had gone home for the day as they had used up their paintball ammunition allowance on absolutely lighting us up in the previous three matches. We still had plenty of paintballs left as we'd not even survived to the midway point of any single match. The final game of the day would be a simple capture the flag affair pitting Squad Zero against whoever was left on the other side. I'm pretty sure the other side had fewer players, but let's be honest, we'd proven ourselves a wholly ineffectual fighting force at this point and I don't think anyone thought our extra numbers were any real advantage.
The final showdown started much as the others had with two or three of us meeting our maker in the opening salvo. After that, the match settled into a cat and mouse game between the surviving members of Squad Zero and the three or four skilled operators on the other side.
Miraculously, we were able to get the match down to two versus one, Christian surviving as our last great hope for some semblance of battlefield glory. He heroically picked his way from cover to cover and was within a few yards of the flag when he ran out of ammunition. With a mighty yell, he broke cover and sprinted to capture the flag dangling in the open in the middle of the field.
Battered and bruised, the eliminated members of Squad Zero watched from the sidelines as Christian approached the flag. This was sort of like the last scene in any overwrought action movie you've ever seen where the hero weaves his way in slow motion through explosions and flying shrapnel to either die tragically or survive gloriously. Think Willem Dafoe in Platoon for the tragic option or Sylvester Stallone in any Rambo movie ever for the glorious option. We got neither.
Feet from the flag, Christian tried to put on the brakes so he could turn back after grabbing our coveted trophy and return it to the base, but he slipped on the loose dirt and landed flat on his back. At that exact moment, one of the skilled operators from the other side squeezed off a round that found its way under the chin guard of Christian's mask and struck the underside of his chin with an audible slapping noise.
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" Christian yelled.
As he laid there writhing in the dirt, one of the guys from the other team sheepishly trotted up, plucked the flag from where it was hanging, and walked back to the other team's base.
"That's it. It's over," the referee said as he blew a pathetic end to the match.
We walked out onto the field to check on Christian, his mask now off and a grotesque, bleeding, golf ball sized welt forming on the underside of his chin.
"You OK?" Ted asked.
"Is there a welt?" Christian asked back.
"There's a welt," Aron said.
It was silent for a few seconds as Christian collected his things and peeled himself off the ground.
"Squad Zero?" someone offered.
"Squad fucking Zero,"Christian answered. "Let's go get a beer."
I confess, I have not been immune to this fantasy. My senior year in high school I nearly caused both of my parents' heads to explode when I informed them that I had talked to the Navy and Marine Corps recruiters who camped out in the hallways of my school and inquired about enlisting with a guaranteed shot at BUDs or Scout/Sniper training. Thankfully, for both my parents and our nation's military, this momentary dalliance with alpha male super supremacy vanished when I was accepted to Baylor University (considerably less badass but minus any log carrying and plus many attractive women) and I joined the ranks of the 99.9% of the American male population who watch the Jason Bourne movies and then try to reconcile their ass kicking fantasies with the fact that they also shop at Banana Republic and just can't start their day without a latte from Starbucks.
Any doubt I had about whether I had made the right choice was wholly and incontrovertibly quashed my sophomore year at Baylor when a group of buddies and I decided to drive to a paintball place just outside of Dallas on a Saturday morning to put our close quarters combat skills to the test. Our genius plan was formulated over beers the previous evening as we had managed to convince ourselves that enough video game playing and action movie watching had somehow imbued us via osmosis with at least a functional knowledge of small squad combat maneuvers and important battlefield techniques like how not to get shot. We were going to be ringers on the paintball field.
Our band of brothers, which we jokingly came to call Squad Zero, was comprised of Aron, of Frogdog fame; Christian, a boy band good looking bartender; Stu, an intellectual communications major; Ted, an aloof guitar playing environmentalist type; Mike, think Brad Pitt from Ocean's Eleven; and myself.
Our first mistake became painfully apparent when we pulled into the parking lot of the paintball place in a cherry red Audi A4 and a beat up Honda Accord still dressed in the same duds we had worn to the bar the night before. We should have driven trucks and we should have changed. More specifically, we should have driven massive, lift kit equipped Ford trucks with gun racks and Ain't Skeerd stickers on their bumpers and changed into as much Real Tree camouflage as we could find at the local Wal-Mart. You know that scene in every White-Kid-Winds-Up-On-The-Wrong-Side-Of-Town movie when Chet or Margaret walks into the hip hop club and the DJ scratches the record to a halt as all of the thugged out black guys turn to stare? It was like that, except with Doomsday militia types and their warrior-to-be progeny and instead of a record scratching to a halt, the sounds of them loading their ridiculously equipped paintball guns ceased.
There was a momentary face off in the dirt parking lot as we were sized up by the regulars who were apparently there for training instead of fun. I'm pretty sure all six of us were wearing black and had on sunglasses. Aron was smoking a cigarette. Stu was bemused in the way an intellectual communications major would be but wisely kept his wisecracks to himself. Mike was wondering why he decided to come to Dallas with us instead of home with one of his many female options the night before. Ted looked terrified.
"Fuck it. Let's go," Aron snarled as he stamped out his cigarette butt on the ground. Not looking to see if any of us were following, he added, "Squad fucking Zero."
As we approached, the locals warily went back to loading their guns but kept one eye on us as we entered the pro shop and inquired about pricing and guns to rent. After the monetary details were hammered out and we were kitted up for the coming war with what I now know to be the paintball equivalent of 4-10 shotguns, the proprietors of the paintball facility asked for our skill level.
"What category are you boys in?"
We all stared back blankly.
"You know, at what level do y'all compete?"
We stared back blankly again and then started to look to one another for an answer.
"We're Squad Zero," I jokingly offered.
"I see," said the paintball guy as he scrawled something on a roster sheet.
In retrospect, he either thought we were a group of experienced paintballers drifting through town in search of a good fight like the plot to some sort of post modern western movie or, and this is much more likely, he realized we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into and took advantage of the opportunity to inject serious comedic relief into what otherwise a creepily serious afternoon of paintballing by assigning us to a team on which we would absolutely get our asses handed to us.
We stepped outside and began to load our paintball guns and adjust our masks as one of the referees called out that we'd begin in a few minutes. In the lull, some of the younger doomsdayers, probably twelve or thirteen years old, ventured up to us.
"Are y'all agg?"
"Agg?" Mike asked.
We again looked to one another searching for some sign that someone in our group had understood the question.
A word of advice: If ever you find yourself attempting something you've never done before, something like kayaking or rock climbing or lugeing or snake wrangling or paintballing, do not feign knowledge in the face of ignorance. Far better to profess ignorance and look silly momentarily than to play along and look silly for an entire afternoon. Hindsight.
"We're Squad fucking Zero," Aron retorted without looking up from loading his gun.
"Yeah, y'all are agg," one of the child soldiers responded.
Satisfied, they ran off to report to the others.
 |
| Do not fuck with kids like these |
"Relax, dude," Aron responded. "Those kids were like ten. Squad Zero."
"Squad Zero," a few of us laughed back, overly confident that age precluded a person from being an absolute crack shot with a paintball gun.
The referee called out two teams of names and had us all follow him to the first field, a wooded but relatively small patch of land, and then quickly explained the rules. I don't really remember much about the rules now, but I do remember that Squad Zero was intact on one team, confident, excited, and ready to win glory on the field of battle. We were sort of like The Light Brigade well before The Charge of The Light Brigade.
The referee blew his whistle and the six of us rushed forward while everyone else on our team wisely dove for cover. Stu, Ted, Mike, and Christian were mowed down immediately. Aron and I found ourselves using three of our child teammates as human shields as we plunged to take cover behind a log.
"Holy fuck!" Aron yelled. "We should have come up with a better plan!"
Paintballs whizzed over our heads and popped loudly against the log in front of us as I meekly held my gun aloft and fired randomly without exposing myself.
"Alright," Aron said, "here's the plan: I'm gonna jump up and run to the next tree and you cover me. Squad Zero!"
Before I could dissuade Aron from this course of action, he sprang up from behind our log, made it two steps, and immediately succumbed to what I like to call The Machine Gun Dance. The Machine Gun Dance is a staple of every 80s military action movie in which some minion finds himself in Stallone or Schwarzenegger's crosshairs and, as he's riddled with bullets, maintains the standing position and sort of shakes all over.
Aron looked down at me when the firing had stopped and, covered in paint, yelled,"Medic!"
As he trudged off the field trying unsuccessfully to dodge more paintballs, a kid from the opposite team calmly walked around the log that had kept me in the game, looked down at me in a pitying way, and, as I cowered in the dirt, shot me in the knee.
"You're out!" the referee swooped in to yell.
Squad Zero after action report #1:
Enemies Killed: 0 (probably)
Life Expectancy After First Shots Were Fired: 1 minute
Casualty Rate: 100%
As Squad Zero reconvened on the losing side of a hugely lopsided loss, we realized that we had been assigned to a team essentially made up of clay pigeons. We were fodder for the more experienced players on the other side. To make matters worse, we were far and away the worst players on a team of bad players. I overheard the Vietnam vets on the other side coaching the child warriors on the finer points of coordinated movement and cover. One of the kids on our team wiped his nose on his sleeve. Aron lit a cigarette. Ted confessed that he didn't think he even fired his gun. I survived the longest by laying on my stomach behind a log.
 |
| Less this... |
 |
| ...more this |
"Follow me to the next field!" bellowed the referee.
The next field consisted of a makeshift plywood compound and a was shaped in a tight triangle with wooded areas on two sides. Squad Zero would be tasked with breaching the compound and eliminating all of its defenders. The 54th Massachusetts had a better chance of storming Ft. Wagner.
The referee blew his whistle and the chaos started all over again. There were probably twenty people on our team and we easily had sixty different ideas as to how best to breach the compound. Squad Zero was a squad in name only and all I remember is that none of us survived and the only thing I'm sure I hit was one of the walls of the compound.
Squad Zero After Action Report #2:
Enemies Killed: 1 or 2 (maybe...and by sheer luck)
Life Expectancy After First Shots Were Fired: 1 minute 30 seconds (best guess)
Casualty Rate: 100%
At this point, someone on the other team must have said something. Fighting us was like playing Call of Duty on the easiest setting and even utter, soul crushing dominance gets boring after a while. Plus, I suspect some of the more militant types really were using this Saturday paintball outing as preparation for when the Feds came knocking. Picking off liberal arts majors at will was probably immensely satisfying for them on a personal level, but it wasn't doing much to prepare them for the coming storm. The referee with the roster sheet made some changes.
We lost the nose wiper and a few others I can't remember and picked up a couple of surly ex military types. I shouldn't be so judgmental. The guys who came over to our team were amenable enough and they tried to give us a few pointers, but there's only so much you can teach when you're in the shit and I'm reasonably confident they were just as happy to let us draw fire while they went about the work of trying to actually win a game.
The next field we played on was 3/4 the size of a football field and had a densely wooded patch right in the middle of it. You couldn't even see the players on the other side when the whistle blew to start the match. After being quickly and unceremoniously eliminated in two successive campaigns, I convinced Christian to stay behind with me as everyone else charged headlong into the thicket. We would slowly creep up to the front after everyone was engaged and try to outflank the enemy.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I said to Christian right after the whistle blew and the rest of Squad Zero sprinted into the brush. "Let's hold up here and then try to outfl-"
*splat*
My field of view, previously occupied by Christian, was now an opaque pink hue, my mask covered in pink paint.
"Fuck," Christian muttered softly.
"You're Out!" the referee rushed in to inform me, as if I'd somehow missed the fact that a paintball had miraculously flown the field's entire seventy five yards to tag me right between the eyes.
I started to take off my mask so I could see my way off the field but was quickly scolded by the referee and then had to stumble my way off the field through the trees and over the uneven ground unable to see anything except the pink paint that served as a violent stamp of disapproval on my genius plan.
The rest of Squad Zero met their fate somewhere in the thicket.
Squad Zero After Action Report #3:
Enemies Killed: 3 (surely we were getting a little better, right?)
Life Expectancy After First Shots Were Fired: 30 seconds (my 5 seconds of survival brought down the average)
Casualty Rate: 94.4% (I think Stu lived through the ordeal)
By this time, Squad Zero was well and truly demoralized. It got even worse when one of the child soldiers from the other team came up to us at lunch and informed us that we were not, in fact, "agg". I'm still not entirely sure what "agg" means, but I'm guessing it doesn't involve cowering behind logs, getting shot first in every match, and yelling "Medic!" every time you get hit with a paintball.
The last match of the day, mercifully, took place on a field occupied by inflatable trapezoids and pyramids. Many of the militia types and child warriors had gone home for the day as they had used up their paintball ammunition allowance on absolutely lighting us up in the previous three matches. We still had plenty of paintballs left as we'd not even survived to the midway point of any single match. The final game of the day would be a simple capture the flag affair pitting Squad Zero against whoever was left on the other side. I'm pretty sure the other side had fewer players, but let's be honest, we'd proven ourselves a wholly ineffectual fighting force at this point and I don't think anyone thought our extra numbers were any real advantage.
The final showdown started much as the others had with two or three of us meeting our maker in the opening salvo. After that, the match settled into a cat and mouse game between the surviving members of Squad Zero and the three or four skilled operators on the other side.
Miraculously, we were able to get the match down to two versus one, Christian surviving as our last great hope for some semblance of battlefield glory. He heroically picked his way from cover to cover and was within a few yards of the flag when he ran out of ammunition. With a mighty yell, he broke cover and sprinted to capture the flag dangling in the open in the middle of the field.
Battered and bruised, the eliminated members of Squad Zero watched from the sidelines as Christian approached the flag. This was sort of like the last scene in any overwrought action movie you've ever seen where the hero weaves his way in slow motion through explosions and flying shrapnel to either die tragically or survive gloriously. Think Willem Dafoe in Platoon for the tragic option or Sylvester Stallone in any Rambo movie ever for the glorious option. We got neither.
 |
| If there's a comedic version of this scene, Christian's heroic charge was it |
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" Christian yelled.
As he laid there writhing in the dirt, one of the guys from the other team sheepishly trotted up, plucked the flag from where it was hanging, and walked back to the other team's base.
"That's it. It's over," the referee said as he blew a pathetic end to the match.
We walked out onto the field to check on Christian, his mask now off and a grotesque, bleeding, golf ball sized welt forming on the underside of his chin.
"You OK?" Ted asked.
"Is there a welt?" Christian asked back.
"There's a welt," Aron said.
It was silent for a few seconds as Christian collected his things and peeled himself off the ground.
"Squad Zero?" someone offered.
"Squad fucking Zero,"Christian answered. "Let's go get a beer."
Monday, February 20, 2012
Alternate John Connor
Spoiler Alert: I'm going to sound like a judgmental prick in this post. I'm OK with that.
I know this guy I like to call Alternate John Connor. He is, in all ways, distinctly underwhelming.
Alternate John Connor is that frat guy you knew in college. Not That Frat Guy; the one who was the Van Wilder of the coolest frat on campus, threw great parties, and managed to charmingly sleep his way through the entire Panhellenic Council, but That Frat Guy; the one who wound up a sixth year senior in that middling fraternity everyone sort of forgot about. You know the one. It wasn't the uber geek frat that won all of the knowledge bowls or the one with all the fratty fratastic frat guys, but the one that all the wannabe fratty fratastic frat guys joined when their first and second choices passed on them.
And Alternate John Connor wasn't a big deal in that middling frat. He was the guy who drank way too much - even amongst guys who all drank way too much - and couldn't wait for the hazing to start every time a new pledge class came down the pike.
And Alternate John Connor didn't achieve this vaunted position of mediocrity at a major university, but instead threw himself full blooded into being That Frat Guy in that middling fraternity at that university that occupies a space in the pantheon of institutions of higher learning somewhere between community college and an actual university you may have heard of. Not Indiana University but Indiana State University. Not The University of Texas but Stephen F. Austin University.
Alternate John Connor graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in inflated egoism and minored in drinking, homophobia, misogyny, discriminatory speech, and date rape. Like I said, Alternate John Connor is, in all ways, distinctly underwhelming.
So why do I call him Alternate John Connor?
Well, he strikes me as Edward Furlong's Young John Connor from Terminator 2 all grown up...after Skynet is destroyed and the audience gets that whole, "There's no fate but the one we make for ourselves," business. Ignore for a moment that Hollywood realized the Terminator cash cow was all dried up once Not Comically Old and Soggy Around the Midsection Arnold Schwarzenegger gave that tear jerking thumbs up as he was dipped in molten steel and assume that Terminators 3 and 4 (were there more?!) never saw the light of day.
Side note: Christian Bale loves this alternative future.
If you're comfortable with that, and I am guessing most Terminator fans are, that means John Connor, son of Sarah Connor, who was raised from word go to believe that he was literally the Savior of All Mankind, received weapons training, fought a liquid metal killing machine in the streets of LA, and destroyed all trace of Skynet with the help of an Austrian accented cyborg is telling anyone who will listen that, had things worked out a little differently, he'd be the indispensable leader of a post apocalypse resistance movement living life on a razor's edge and insuring the continued propagation of the human species.
Instead, Alternate John Connor sells insurance, still rides around on a dirt bike, plays WAY too much Call of Duty, and knows all of the lyrics to every song on Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion II album. He's John Connor all grown up but without, you know, the raison d'etre.
"There's no fate but the one we make for ourselves."
Careful what you wish for, Alternate John Connor.
I know this guy I like to call Alternate John Connor. He is, in all ways, distinctly underwhelming.
Alternate John Connor is that frat guy you knew in college. Not That Frat Guy; the one who was the Van Wilder of the coolest frat on campus, threw great parties, and managed to charmingly sleep his way through the entire Panhellenic Council, but That Frat Guy; the one who wound up a sixth year senior in that middling fraternity everyone sort of forgot about. You know the one. It wasn't the uber geek frat that won all of the knowledge bowls or the one with all the fratty fratastic frat guys, but the one that all the wannabe fratty fratastic frat guys joined when their first and second choices passed on them.
And Alternate John Connor wasn't a big deal in that middling frat. He was the guy who drank way too much - even amongst guys who all drank way too much - and couldn't wait for the hazing to start every time a new pledge class came down the pike.
And Alternate John Connor didn't achieve this vaunted position of mediocrity at a major university, but instead threw himself full blooded into being That Frat Guy in that middling fraternity at that university that occupies a space in the pantheon of institutions of higher learning somewhere between community college and an actual university you may have heard of. Not Indiana University but Indiana State University. Not The University of Texas but Stephen F. Austin University.
Alternate John Connor graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in inflated egoism and minored in drinking, homophobia, misogyny, discriminatory speech, and date rape. Like I said, Alternate John Connor is, in all ways, distinctly underwhelming.
So why do I call him Alternate John Connor?
Well, he strikes me as Edward Furlong's Young John Connor from Terminator 2 all grown up...after Skynet is destroyed and the audience gets that whole, "There's no fate but the one we make for ourselves," business. Ignore for a moment that Hollywood realized the Terminator cash cow was all dried up once Not Comically Old and Soggy Around the Midsection Arnold Schwarzenegger gave that tear jerking thumbs up as he was dipped in molten steel and assume that Terminators 3 and 4 (were there more?!) never saw the light of day.
Side note: Christian Bale loves this alternative future.
If you're comfortable with that, and I am guessing most Terminator fans are, that means John Connor, son of Sarah Connor, who was raised from word go to believe that he was literally the Savior of All Mankind, received weapons training, fought a liquid metal killing machine in the streets of LA, and destroyed all trace of Skynet with the help of an Austrian accented cyborg is telling anyone who will listen that, had things worked out a little differently, he'd be the indispensable leader of a post apocalypse resistance movement living life on a razor's edge and insuring the continued propagation of the human species.
 |
| John Connor, Badass |
 |
| Alternate John Connor, Douchebag |
"There's no fate but the one we make for ourselves."
Careful what you wish for, Alternate John Connor.
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Try Not to Kill Thy Neighbor
I moved into a new place in October and I mostly love it. It's on the third floor of a well renovated historic building in my favorite neighborhood in Indianapolis and has high ceilings and hardwood floors. Every room is accented by massive, mostly south facing windows and even on cloudy days the apartment is flooded with natural light and great views of the sky. It kind of feels like my own private tree house. Grocery stores and good restaurants are within walking distance and a relaxing run on the city's expansive Monon Trail is only a minute's jog from my building. Like I said, I mostly love it. Mostly.
What I don't love, and what I'm trying to come to grips with, is my neighbors. Specifically, the loud talking, salsa loving, often fighting, odd hours keeping, horrible pet owning, boisterous, standoffish, inconsiderate, and generally miserable Puerto Rican couple who live in 303.
I've had bad neighbors before and there's a certain amount of inconvenience one accepts when moving into a living space with shared walls, but Ricky and Lucy are seriously trying my patience. Last night, they seemed to be playing some sort of game that required the random dropping of a bag of bowling balls in various rooms throughout their apartment. This game lasted until nearly 2AM and must have been hilarious because each cacophonous crash was followed by peals of laughter and screaming. Previous to this, Ricky and Lucy were watching Caso Cerrado at insane volumes and struggling to yell their commentary about the show to one another in different rooms of their apartment. How do I know this? Well, unfortunately, I chose to learn Spanish over two wonderful summers in Argentina and now I can be pissed off at bad neighbors in two different languages.
Yelling is easily their favorite pastime. I've had amorous neighbors before and it's a little awkward listening to them have all kinds of sex at all kinds of hours (especially when you're not having any sex at any hour), but I'd take rhythmic slapping and moans over arguing any day of the week. If Ricky and Lucy have sex, it's the only quiet thing they do. By the frequency of their arguing, I'm guessing the honeymoon is well and truly over and their favorite time to fight is just before normal people drift off to sleep.
What do they fight about? All kinds of shit. The latest argument was about the dog they recently acquired. Apparently, taking Precious out to water the grass in the depths of a Midwest Winter is not at the top of the list of favorite activities for either of them. Speaking of Precious, I hate her too. I kid about tying Mazzy in a pillowcase and throwing her into a river, but I really would tie Precious in a pillowcase and throw her into a river. Ricky and Lucy would be close behind. Do they make pillowcases that big? Precious is a jet black Cocker Spaniel who barks at everything and everyone as if they pose an immediate and dire threat to her well being. Ricky and Lucy refuse to leash her or pick up the impossibly huge piles of shit she drops around the common areas of the building in spite of the fact that there are FOUR SEPARATE DOGGY BAG DISPENSERS SURROUNDING OUR BUILDING. It literally requires more effort to ignore the signs and bags and disapproving looks from the other tenants in the building than it does to clean up after the dog.
They have a bird too. Pirates have birds. Teenaged girls have birds. Normal adult couples should not own birds. How do I know they have a bird? The bird squawks randomly at all hours of the day and night. Precious sees this as an affront to her safety and barks at the bird. The bird counters by squawking even more. Ricky and/or Lucy, on edge from a late night of arguing and/or playing the bowling ball game, counters by unleashing a profanity laced tirade in staccato Puerto Rican Spanish at Precious and the bird. If this works, and it usually takes a good five minutes to have any effect, they all celebrate by blaring the same salsa album and dancing around their apartment like they're in a rum commercial.
My options on how to deal with this situation are severely limited. Ricky and Lucy are clearly not the sort of people who have the self awareness to respond favorably to a polite, "Hey, could y'all keep it down please?", as this is a nightly occurrence and even a modicum of consideration for their neighbors would mean that none of these issues would be issues in the first place. That leaves hammer murder, framing them for a crime that carries with it a lengthy jail sentence, buying them a well insulated mansion on a huge plot of land far away from any other living soul, rendering myself deaf, and acceptance as my only remaining courses of action. I don't see any of these things happening.
In Leviticus it says to love thy neighbor as thyself. I've tried and failed to live up to this commandment but I take comfort in the fact that Leviticus also says never to graze different types of cattle together, never to wear garments made of more than one kind of fabric, never to allow people with flat noses to worship at the altar, not to shave, and that psychics and wizards should be stoned to death. Clearly, Leviticus isn't exactly infallible. Maybe "Tolerate thy neighbor," is a better jumping off point. Lord knows I'm trying.
What I don't love, and what I'm trying to come to grips with, is my neighbors. Specifically, the loud talking, salsa loving, often fighting, odd hours keeping, horrible pet owning, boisterous, standoffish, inconsiderate, and generally miserable Puerto Rican couple who live in 303.
I've had bad neighbors before and there's a certain amount of inconvenience one accepts when moving into a living space with shared walls, but Ricky and Lucy are seriously trying my patience. Last night, they seemed to be playing some sort of game that required the random dropping of a bag of bowling balls in various rooms throughout their apartment. This game lasted until nearly 2AM and must have been hilarious because each cacophonous crash was followed by peals of laughter and screaming. Previous to this, Ricky and Lucy were watching Caso Cerrado at insane volumes and struggling to yell their commentary about the show to one another in different rooms of their apartment. How do I know this? Well, unfortunately, I chose to learn Spanish over two wonderful summers in Argentina and now I can be pissed off at bad neighbors in two different languages.
Yelling is easily their favorite pastime. I've had amorous neighbors before and it's a little awkward listening to them have all kinds of sex at all kinds of hours (especially when you're not having any sex at any hour), but I'd take rhythmic slapping and moans over arguing any day of the week. If Ricky and Lucy have sex, it's the only quiet thing they do. By the frequency of their arguing, I'm guessing the honeymoon is well and truly over and their favorite time to fight is just before normal people drift off to sleep.
What do they fight about? All kinds of shit. The latest argument was about the dog they recently acquired. Apparently, taking Precious out to water the grass in the depths of a Midwest Winter is not at the top of the list of favorite activities for either of them. Speaking of Precious, I hate her too. I kid about tying Mazzy in a pillowcase and throwing her into a river, but I really would tie Precious in a pillowcase and throw her into a river. Ricky and Lucy would be close behind. Do they make pillowcases that big? Precious is a jet black Cocker Spaniel who barks at everything and everyone as if they pose an immediate and dire threat to her well being. Ricky and Lucy refuse to leash her or pick up the impossibly huge piles of shit she drops around the common areas of the building in spite of the fact that there are FOUR SEPARATE DOGGY BAG DISPENSERS SURROUNDING OUR BUILDING. It literally requires more effort to ignore the signs and bags and disapproving looks from the other tenants in the building than it does to clean up after the dog.
They have a bird too. Pirates have birds. Teenaged girls have birds. Normal adult couples should not own birds. How do I know they have a bird? The bird squawks randomly at all hours of the day and night. Precious sees this as an affront to her safety and barks at the bird. The bird counters by squawking even more. Ricky and/or Lucy, on edge from a late night of arguing and/or playing the bowling ball game, counters by unleashing a profanity laced tirade in staccato Puerto Rican Spanish at Precious and the bird. If this works, and it usually takes a good five minutes to have any effect, they all celebrate by blaring the same salsa album and dancing around their apartment like they're in a rum commercial.
My options on how to deal with this situation are severely limited. Ricky and Lucy are clearly not the sort of people who have the self awareness to respond favorably to a polite, "Hey, could y'all keep it down please?", as this is a nightly occurrence and even a modicum of consideration for their neighbors would mean that none of these issues would be issues in the first place. That leaves hammer murder, framing them for a crime that carries with it a lengthy jail sentence, buying them a well insulated mansion on a huge plot of land far away from any other living soul, rendering myself deaf, and acceptance as my only remaining courses of action. I don't see any of these things happening.
In Leviticus it says to love thy neighbor as thyself. I've tried and failed to live up to this commandment but I take comfort in the fact that Leviticus also says never to graze different types of cattle together, never to wear garments made of more than one kind of fabric, never to allow people with flat noses to worship at the altar, not to shave, and that psychics and wizards should be stoned to death. Clearly, Leviticus isn't exactly infallible. Maybe "Tolerate thy neighbor," is a better jumping off point. Lord knows I'm trying.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Newt Gingrich Has Lost His Shit: An Open Letter to Newt Gingrich
Newt,
Do you mind if I call you Newt? I've never known a Newt. As I kid I had a tree frog, turtles, dogs, and even a tarantula, but never a newt, much less a Newt. It's quite the diminutive. I have to say though, maybe you should have stuck with Newton or even rocked Leroy once you kind of figured out you may want to go into politics. Plenty of people go by their middle names (I do!) and Newt just strikes me as a little unpresidential. Like Cooter or Hambone or Catfish. Enough about the name; you're played the cards you're dealt, right?
What I want to know is this: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MOON COLONY BULLSHIT?!?! A moon colony? Really, Newt? Really? What is going on with the GOP? You guys are in a race for the Republican nomination, not a race to see who can be the most unelectable. Rick Perry is a crazy, Christian fundamentalist with an affinity for Carhartt jackets, incredibly well coiffed hair, and epic verbal bumbles. Michele Bachmann is a sharp-faced homophobe (in spite of the fact that she seems to be married to a confirmed bachelor) who simultaneously manages to misspell both her first and last names. Herman Cain is a pizza baron (a pizza baron?) who apparently likes to give his female customers a little extra pepperoni even when they say "Please, no pepperoni, Mr. Cain." Mitt Romney is a Mormon cyborg who is incredibly successful in the business of ruining lives. And Ron Paul, well, he sometimes makes sense, which precludes him from ever doing anything meaningful in Washington.
Newt, you were back in the game! Granted, that game is a game of Who Wants To Lose To Obama Next November, but at least you were in the conversation after an epically slow start off the blocks. And now this? A moon colony? Were all your staffers just sitting around before the Florida primary out of ideas and frustrated and someone said, "Fuck it, let's watch Total Recall"?
Listen, I'm all for setting a lofty goal to galvanize the nation in the face of stark challenges, but Kennedy's "Land a man on the moon" this is not. We were in the throes of The Cold War and an epic pissing contest with the Soviets. There was a race to be won. The Taliban doesn't even believe in toothpaste, much less space travel and I'm pretty sure John Q. Public would rather find a way to keep his house here on earth than have you fund a program to build him one on THE FUCKING MOON! The moon?!?
This has been like watching a bunch of special needs high school kids run for class office. You guys might as well promise to put Dr. Pepper in all of the nation's drinking fountains or cut the workday by two hours every Friday for a nationwide pep rally.
Seriously, Newt. Stop playing. You guys are all joking around, right? This is like a massive hidden camera show and the entire US populace is the mark, right? That has to be it. You guys are going to put Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Saturday Night Live out of business because the Republican debates are more hilarious than anything Comedy Central or SNL writers could come up with. Is that the angle? Shoot me straight. You guys are just ceding this election to Obama in a bid to run the lampooners out of business and pave the way for a Republican win in 2016, right?
No?
WHAT THE FUCK, NEWT GINGRICH?!
I feel like Will Ferrell's Alex Trebek in the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches from Saturday Night Live. Say something that makes sense, anything at all, and you can win this nomination. What's that you say? Fund a moon colony? Jesus.
Hoping you're the first and last colonist we send to the moon,
Doug
Do you mind if I call you Newt? I've never known a Newt. As I kid I had a tree frog, turtles, dogs, and even a tarantula, but never a newt, much less a Newt. It's quite the diminutive. I have to say though, maybe you should have stuck with Newton or even rocked Leroy once you kind of figured out you may want to go into politics. Plenty of people go by their middle names (I do!) and Newt just strikes me as a little unpresidential. Like Cooter or Hambone or Catfish. Enough about the name; you're played the cards you're dealt, right?
What I want to know is this: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MOON COLONY BULLSHIT?!?! A moon colony? Really, Newt? Really? What is going on with the GOP? You guys are in a race for the Republican nomination, not a race to see who can be the most unelectable. Rick Perry is a crazy, Christian fundamentalist with an affinity for Carhartt jackets, incredibly well coiffed hair, and epic verbal bumbles. Michele Bachmann is a sharp-faced homophobe (in spite of the fact that she seems to be married to a confirmed bachelor) who simultaneously manages to misspell both her first and last names. Herman Cain is a pizza baron (a pizza baron?) who apparently likes to give his female customers a little extra pepperoni even when they say "Please, no pepperoni, Mr. Cain." Mitt Romney is a Mormon cyborg who is incredibly successful in the business of ruining lives. And Ron Paul, well, he sometimes makes sense, which precludes him from ever doing anything meaningful in Washington.
Newt, you were back in the game! Granted, that game is a game of Who Wants To Lose To Obama Next November, but at least you were in the conversation after an epically slow start off the blocks. And now this? A moon colony? Were all your staffers just sitting around before the Florida primary out of ideas and frustrated and someone said, "Fuck it, let's watch Total Recall"?
 |
| Ground control to Newt Gingrich. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. |
This has been like watching a bunch of special needs high school kids run for class office. You guys might as well promise to put Dr. Pepper in all of the nation's drinking fountains or cut the workday by two hours every Friday for a nationwide pep rally.
Seriously, Newt. Stop playing. You guys are all joking around, right? This is like a massive hidden camera show and the entire US populace is the mark, right? That has to be it. You guys are going to put Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Saturday Night Live out of business because the Republican debates are more hilarious than anything Comedy Central or SNL writers could come up with. Is that the angle? Shoot me straight. You guys are just ceding this election to Obama in a bid to run the lampooners out of business and pave the way for a Republican win in 2016, right?
No?
WHAT THE FUCK, NEWT GINGRICH?!
I feel like Will Ferrell's Alex Trebek in the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches from Saturday Night Live. Say something that makes sense, anything at all, and you can win this nomination. What's that you say? Fund a moon colony? Jesus.
Hoping you're the first and last colonist we send to the moon,
Doug
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Prestige: My Home-Schooled Dog
I am an accidental dog owner. Although I didn't happen upon Mazzy Sarah Maclachlan pitiful, covered in mud, whimpering in an alley somewhere and take her in or win her in a white elephant auction or foolishly enter into some foggy business transaction with a non-English speaking Gypsy and have her foisted upon me, I did become inextricably her Alpha Dog in nearly as significant a what-the-fuck-just-happened kind of way...although much less altruistically than in the Sarah Maclachlan scenario.
In retrospect, I was sort of cattleman Shanghai-ed; rancher magic tricked. I had a buddy who had an uncle who had two working Australian Cattle Dogs and those two ACDs did the deed and wound up with a whole litter of adorable little part Dingos. My buddy expressed an interest in owning one of the puppies and asked me if I'd like to drive out to his uncle's property with him to pick up his new dog.
"Sure," I said, "But I'm not going home with a dog."
"No problem," says he, "We'll only be there for a bit and I'm pretty sure all of the dogs are spoken for already."
I now know this to be the first part of a magic trick. The Pledge.
We rolled into his uncle's dirt driveway and immediately laid eyes upon a whole gaggle of rambunctious ACD hellions wrestling in the mud, nipping one another's recently docked tails, and moving in all ways like atoms being shot around a super-collider.
When I first saw Mazzy, I won't say it was love at first sight, but it definitely wasn't disinterest. She was the only she. She was the only one whose tail had not been docked, and she was staring up at a plane flying overhead. This is sort of the single guy's equivalent of walking into a coffee shop where a bunch of girls are comparing Coach purses, talking about Jersey Shore, preening, and then looking over to see a naturally beautiful woman reading A Death in The Family quietly by herself.
This is the second part of a magic trick. The Turn.
My buddy was trying to corral his new puppy and talk to his uncle while Mazzy and I shared a moment. She was energetic but not manic. She was playful but not dopey. She was inquisitive but not clingy. She was...
"She's yours if you want her," my buddy's uncle said.
"Ha! I'm just along for the ride," I replied. "I can barely take care of myself, much less a dog." Seriously. This wasn't just Texas banter. I liked to stay up late, sleep late, drink beer, come and go as I pleased, and lead a decidedly dogless life.
I might as well have said, "I love her! I have to have her!"
"My daughter wanted her, but she's being wishy-washy. Hang on, I'll call her," was the rancher's reply.
After a brief phone conversation (it easily could have been a dial tone on the other end of the line) in which the rancher's daughter decided that she could not take the dog, I found myself driving home with a puppy riding shotgun. How'd he do that?
This is the third part of a magic trick. The Prestige.
I'd be inclined to applaud, but my furry little prestige has continued to appear at the foot of my bed every morning for the last six years. Energetic has become borderline manic. Playful has become occasionally dopey. And inquisitive has most certainly touched on clingy.
For those unfamiliar with ACDs, they have energy for days. These are dogs who herd cattle, not bitchass sheep. They're rugged, athletic, tough as nails, and loyal/protective to a fault. Every time Mazzy and I see another dog on one of our runs (these runs are a necessity to bleed some of that energy), Mazzy goes all Regulator from that Warren G song and starts repping her hood. She's handy with the steel and she's damn good too. Mostly, this is an annoyance as it serves to nearly send me ass over tea kettle more often than not and, if she's ever able to get to the other dog, her Regulator attitude quickly devolves into licking and butt sniffing.
Additionally, she's way too smart for her own good. If I make a move to the drawer in the dresser with the running shorts in it, even if it's just to fold said shorts and put them away, her ears perk up and her tail wags and she goes to her leash. Once we're outside, she drumrolls the ground with her paws until she hears the beep on my watch and then barks and bounds joyfully for the first fifty yards or so of our run. And these aren't token runs to get her blood flowing a little bit. These are five to ten mile seven and a half or eight minute mile pace runs in all weather.
For a long time I thought the more we went on regular runs, the more she would mellow out a touch. Such is not the case. I've recently become aware that I've been training a world class athlete and she's only getting stronger and therefore more capable of the bounding, barking, chasing mania I was trying to defeat in her.
Now, before you go all Cesar Millan on me, understand that the kid has structure, discipline, and affection. In the house, she's an angel. She sits and waits and doesn't get on the furniture or tear up anything. It's only outside that she goes ape shit and really only when we see another dog. Essentially, Mazzy's home-schooled. She's a social retard. I've sometimes handled this patiently and philosophically, and I've sometimes thought about tying her in a pillowcase and throwing her in a river...or mailing her in a box to Sarah Maclachlan. Not really.
But really.
My question to the dog owners out there is this: Any advice on how to rewire a wired, home-schooled, socially retarded, genius athlete? Clearly, my six years of effort have failed to hit the mark.
Also, be careful with how generously you proffer your advice. I've been studying magic tricks and I'm pretty sure this was The Pledge.
In retrospect, I was sort of cattleman Shanghai-ed; rancher magic tricked. I had a buddy who had an uncle who had two working Australian Cattle Dogs and those two ACDs did the deed and wound up with a whole litter of adorable little part Dingos. My buddy expressed an interest in owning one of the puppies and asked me if I'd like to drive out to his uncle's property with him to pick up his new dog.
"Sure," I said, "But I'm not going home with a dog."
"No problem," says he, "We'll only be there for a bit and I'm pretty sure all of the dogs are spoken for already."
I now know this to be the first part of a magic trick. The Pledge.
We rolled into his uncle's dirt driveway and immediately laid eyes upon a whole gaggle of rambunctious ACD hellions wrestling in the mud, nipping one another's recently docked tails, and moving in all ways like atoms being shot around a super-collider.
When I first saw Mazzy, I won't say it was love at first sight, but it definitely wasn't disinterest. She was the only she. She was the only one whose tail had not been docked, and she was staring up at a plane flying overhead. This is sort of the single guy's equivalent of walking into a coffee shop where a bunch of girls are comparing Coach purses, talking about Jersey Shore, preening, and then looking over to see a naturally beautiful woman reading A Death in The Family quietly by herself.
This is the second part of a magic trick. The Turn.
My buddy was trying to corral his new puppy and talk to his uncle while Mazzy and I shared a moment. She was energetic but not manic. She was playful but not dopey. She was inquisitive but not clingy. She was...
"She's yours if you want her," my buddy's uncle said.
"Ha! I'm just along for the ride," I replied. "I can barely take care of myself, much less a dog." Seriously. This wasn't just Texas banter. I liked to stay up late, sleep late, drink beer, come and go as I pleased, and lead a decidedly dogless life.
I might as well have said, "I love her! I have to have her!"
"My daughter wanted her, but she's being wishy-washy. Hang on, I'll call her," was the rancher's reply.
After a brief phone conversation (it easily could have been a dial tone on the other end of the line) in which the rancher's daughter decided that she could not take the dog, I found myself driving home with a puppy riding shotgun. How'd he do that?
This is the third part of a magic trick. The Prestige.
I'd be inclined to applaud, but my furry little prestige has continued to appear at the foot of my bed every morning for the last six years. Energetic has become borderline manic. Playful has become occasionally dopey. And inquisitive has most certainly touched on clingy.
For those unfamiliar with ACDs, they have energy for days. These are dogs who herd cattle, not bitchass sheep. They're rugged, athletic, tough as nails, and loyal/protective to a fault. Every time Mazzy and I see another dog on one of our runs (these runs are a necessity to bleed some of that energy), Mazzy goes all Regulator from that Warren G song and starts repping her hood. She's handy with the steel and she's damn good too. Mostly, this is an annoyance as it serves to nearly send me ass over tea kettle more often than not and, if she's ever able to get to the other dog, her Regulator attitude quickly devolves into licking and butt sniffing.
Additionally, she's way too smart for her own good. If I make a move to the drawer in the dresser with the running shorts in it, even if it's just to fold said shorts and put them away, her ears perk up and her tail wags and she goes to her leash. Once we're outside, she drumrolls the ground with her paws until she hears the beep on my watch and then barks and bounds joyfully for the first fifty yards or so of our run. And these aren't token runs to get her blood flowing a little bit. These are five to ten mile seven and a half or eight minute mile pace runs in all weather.
 |
| Her head is about to explode here. And yes, I'm wearing tights. |
Now, before you go all Cesar Millan on me, understand that the kid has structure, discipline, and affection. In the house, she's an angel. She sits and waits and doesn't get on the furniture or tear up anything. It's only outside that she goes ape shit and really only when we see another dog. Essentially, Mazzy's home-schooled. She's a social retard. I've sometimes handled this patiently and philosophically, and I've sometimes thought about tying her in a pillowcase and throwing her in a river...or mailing her in a box to Sarah Maclachlan. Not really.
But really.
My question to the dog owners out there is this: Any advice on how to rewire a wired, home-schooled, socially retarded, genius athlete? Clearly, my six years of effort have failed to hit the mark.
Also, be careful with how generously you proffer your advice. I've been studying magic tricks and I'm pretty sure this was The Pledge.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Words With Friends People I've Grown to Hate
One of the many pieces of evidence that has supported my great fear that I am in fact getting older is my intolerance for all manner of social networking games, apps, and postable quizzes. I'm immediately tempted to defriend anyone on Facebook who invites me to play Farmville or Mafia Wars or who posts anything telling me how in love they are today. I Facestalk as much as the next guy, but have the decency to give me something to reward me for my efforts. I don't care which John Hughes film you are or that you're listening to Lana Del Rey RIGHT NOW. In the future, everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame. There's an app for that.
The one exception to my curmudgeonly aversion to these sorts of things is Words With Friends. I'm addicted to it. I'm the guy who will start three games with one person and play them all at the same time. This is the 2012 version of that home schooled kid with two inhalers and the perpetually runny nose entering a speed scrabble tournament. I worry about defense and vowel to consonant ratios and setting up big scores. I mentally high five myself when I use a Q, Z, or X on a triple letter space in a word that also covers a triple word score. I talk trash to myself to my opponents when I break the one hundred point barrier with a single word. I play on my phone at stoplights. I get honked at.
The thing is, for a guy who loves words and reading and prides himself on having a well developed vocabulary, I have three friends who absolutely beat the shit out of me every time we play. When I first became addicted to the game, I had fantasies of playing words like loquacious, pusillanimous, quixotic, and acquiesce. Instead, I'm regularly losing to a Canadian dairy farmer, a bartender, and a should-have-been Abercrombie model. And by "losing" (10 points), I mean being epically defeated by over one hundred points and struggling to play words like nut (5 points), it (2 points), poo (5 points), and hi (4 points). This exasperates (20 points) me.
Norm's not really a dairy farmer...anymore. He grew up in bucolic (15 points) New Brunswick on a dairy farm but is now a chemist for a major pharmaceutical company. In all honesty, he may be the smartest guy I know and he approaches Words With Friends in the same meticulous manner that he services his bike, cleans his home, and grills his steaks. This means he's memorized every Q without U word, every two letter word, and probably has a reference guide akin to a football coach's "Go For 2" chart that is codified, highlighted, and indexed (17 points) that tells him which playable word is most likely to send me into a blind, murderous rage. Every time I think I'm hanging in there he goes and plays a word like "qoph."
Me: Qoph?! What the fuck does qoph mean?! Use it in a sentence.
Norm: Doug, qoph is the nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
Dammit!
The thing is, unlike some of my other more Machiavellian (28 points) friends, I know Norm isn't googling "words that start with q" and then pulling a fast one on me. He's smart and principled. I hate him for it.
Much like Norm, Daniel isn't really a bartender, although he does tend bar...at the pub he also part owns. The thing about the restaurant business is that to be successful you have to have good food, a great atmosphere, and incredible business acumen (14 points). The restaurant industry cemetery is littered with well meaning creative types who could cook their socks off but couldn't do inventory or manage a staff to save their lives. Daniel seems quite capable in all of these areas, which apparently makes him unbeatable at Words With Friends. Restaurateurs are often up at all hours of the night and I can't tell you how infuriating it is to wake up to your turn and find that some pugnacious (21 points) pub proprietor has found time, between mixing Jaeger Bombs and pulling Guinness pints, to drop a "quizzical" on you for over one hundred points. Recently, Daniel has stopped asking me for games. Do you know what it feels like to not be challenging enough for someone? It's like getting dumped. I can use circuitous (18 points) in a sentence, dammit! To make matters worse, if he ever does ask me for a game again, I'll know it's because he met his Daniel and he needs a slump buster.
John is a soccer buddy of mine from college. He's easily one of the best players I've ever had the pleasure of sharing the field with and I'll always remember both of us arguably having the match of our college careers in the same game. He scored four goals and I stood on my head to save four times as many and we beat the number two team in the region in an away match in which their fans' trash talk became sincerely complimentary towards me in the second half. Add to that the fact that John doesn't have a disingenuous bone in his body and that that body is chiseled like a freaking Greek god - not to sound homosexual (24 points) - and you can see why it's SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING to get absolutely worked over every time we play Words With Friends. In our last game, he won 417 to 216. He played "glozed." Glozed?
I make myself feel better by telling myself things like I was the cerebral (14 points) kid on the team and John was the strong jaw line and surely he meant to play "glazed," but accidentally used an O and it just happened to work out for him, but this happens every time we play. No one's that lucky. Right? And if they are, why is it against me? Maybe he has a cheat code I don't know about. The thinking man's version of up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Select, Start. Glozed. Fuck glozed.
If I keep playing I'll get better. I've learned to use ka and adz and za to great effect, but Norm, Daniel, and John continue to be my white whales. Swerve, me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
Fuck. Norm just played "hove" for forty eight points.
The one exception to my curmudgeonly aversion to these sorts of things is Words With Friends. I'm addicted to it. I'm the guy who will start three games with one person and play them all at the same time. This is the 2012 version of that home schooled kid with two inhalers and the perpetually runny nose entering a speed scrabble tournament. I worry about defense and vowel to consonant ratios and setting up big scores. I mentally high five myself when I use a Q, Z, or X on a triple letter space in a word that also covers a triple word score. I talk trash to myself to my opponents when I break the one hundred point barrier with a single word. I play on my phone at stoplights. I get honked at.
The thing is, for a guy who loves words and reading and prides himself on having a well developed vocabulary, I have three friends who absolutely beat the shit out of me every time we play. When I first became addicted to the game, I had fantasies of playing words like loquacious, pusillanimous, quixotic, and acquiesce. Instead, I'm regularly losing to a Canadian dairy farmer, a bartender, and a should-have-been Abercrombie model. And by "losing" (10 points), I mean being epically defeated by over one hundred points and struggling to play words like nut (5 points), it (2 points), poo (5 points), and hi (4 points). This exasperates (20 points) me.
Norm's not really a dairy farmer...anymore. He grew up in bucolic (15 points) New Brunswick on a dairy farm but is now a chemist for a major pharmaceutical company. In all honesty, he may be the smartest guy I know and he approaches Words With Friends in the same meticulous manner that he services his bike, cleans his home, and grills his steaks. This means he's memorized every Q without U word, every two letter word, and probably has a reference guide akin to a football coach's "Go For 2" chart that is codified, highlighted, and indexed (17 points) that tells him which playable word is most likely to send me into a blind, murderous rage. Every time I think I'm hanging in there he goes and plays a word like "qoph."
Me: Qoph?! What the fuck does qoph mean?! Use it in a sentence.
Norm: Doug, qoph is the nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
Dammit!
The thing is, unlike some of my other more Machiavellian (28 points) friends, I know Norm isn't googling "words that start with q" and then pulling a fast one on me. He's smart and principled. I hate him for it.
Much like Norm, Daniel isn't really a bartender, although he does tend bar...at the pub he also part owns. The thing about the restaurant business is that to be successful you have to have good food, a great atmosphere, and incredible business acumen (14 points). The restaurant industry cemetery is littered with well meaning creative types who could cook their socks off but couldn't do inventory or manage a staff to save their lives. Daniel seems quite capable in all of these areas, which apparently makes him unbeatable at Words With Friends. Restaurateurs are often up at all hours of the night and I can't tell you how infuriating it is to wake up to your turn and find that some pugnacious (21 points) pub proprietor has found time, between mixing Jaeger Bombs and pulling Guinness pints, to drop a "quizzical" on you for over one hundred points. Recently, Daniel has stopped asking me for games. Do you know what it feels like to not be challenging enough for someone? It's like getting dumped. I can use circuitous (18 points) in a sentence, dammit! To make matters worse, if he ever does ask me for a game again, I'll know it's because he met his Daniel and he needs a slump buster.
John is a soccer buddy of mine from college. He's easily one of the best players I've ever had the pleasure of sharing the field with and I'll always remember both of us arguably having the match of our college careers in the same game. He scored four goals and I stood on my head to save four times as many and we beat the number two team in the region in an away match in which their fans' trash talk became sincerely complimentary towards me in the second half. Add to that the fact that John doesn't have a disingenuous bone in his body and that that body is chiseled like a freaking Greek god - not to sound homosexual (24 points) - and you can see why it's SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING to get absolutely worked over every time we play Words With Friends. In our last game, he won 417 to 216. He played "glozed." Glozed?
I make myself feel better by telling myself things like I was the cerebral (14 points) kid on the team and John was the strong jaw line and surely he meant to play "glazed," but accidentally used an O and it just happened to work out for him, but this happens every time we play. No one's that lucky. Right? And if they are, why is it against me? Maybe he has a cheat code I don't know about. The thinking man's version of up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Select, Start. Glozed. Fuck glozed.
If I keep playing I'll get better. I've learned to use ka and adz and za to great effect, but Norm, Daniel, and John continue to be my white whales. Swerve, me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
Fuck. Norm just played "hove" for forty eight points.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Shout Out
My college buddy Kelsey is intelligent, insightful, talented, gorgeous, and snarky as hell. Also, she shares my birthday so she has to be badass. Read her blog at Kelseynicollescott.com and like it. That is all...unless you're a talent scout and need an actor, writer, singer, and/or outstanding waitress. In that case, hire her. That is truly all.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Rocky Mountain National Park
I was on a business trip to Denver in 2008 with a buddy of mine from work. We had a few hours one afternoon with nothing to do so I suggested we put our four cylinder rental car through its paces and make the drive to the visitor's center at Rocky Mountain National Park.
The park is one of my favorite places in the world. In national park circles this is a little like saying PF Chang's or Maggiano's is your favorite restaurant. Rocky Mountain National Park lacks the isolated beauty of Acadia or Zion and its proximity to Denver makes it a certainty that, especially in the summer, one will have to travel well off the beaten path to find that delicious moment of solace so many national park goers seek when they plan a trip. And to travel off said beaten path, a back country pass must be applied for years in advance.
It's atypical for me to say this, but that's part of why I love the park so much. I've never been there, whether in a car for a brief visit or on foot with just a few awed friends for company two days from the trailhead, and not seen something profoundly beautiful. The park's magic is in its accessibility. On a hazy, claustrophobic day in Denver, one can look west and know that just an hour away, hiding impossibly behind the particulate in the air, is a panorama of natural beauty on a scale that puts daily life in its proper perspective.
My work buddy had never been west of the Mississippi River and was anxious as soon as the road tilted slightly upwards as we weaved toward Estes Park. I made the most of this by repeatedly taking my hands off the steering wheel to fiddle with the radio and point out elk or cyclists or breaks in the tree line. He countered by repeatedly imploring me to keep both hands on the wheel and ease off the accelerator a bit as he snapped pictures out the car window.
I learned long ago that any photos I took would insult my memory of what the views actually looked like. There's just no way to capture the totality of such an impressive landscape and the depth and colors and crispness of the mountains always seems too compressed and demagnified through the lens of a camera. Maybe I'm just a bad photographer. In spite of this, I had packed my camera just in case, but I had no plans to use it. I just wanted to get to the visitor's center and sit and watch and be still.
It was late afternoon and the sun was starting to set. The Alpine Visitor's Center at Rocky Mountain National Park is right at 12,000 feet and even in August it gets really cold in the evening. We were not dressed for this at all, but a lenticular cloud was hovering right above the peak at the visitor's center and as the sun dipped, it did this:
The park is one of my favorite places in the world. In national park circles this is a little like saying PF Chang's or Maggiano's is your favorite restaurant. Rocky Mountain National Park lacks the isolated beauty of Acadia or Zion and its proximity to Denver makes it a certainty that, especially in the summer, one will have to travel well off the beaten path to find that delicious moment of solace so many national park goers seek when they plan a trip. And to travel off said beaten path, a back country pass must be applied for years in advance.
It's atypical for me to say this, but that's part of why I love the park so much. I've never been there, whether in a car for a brief visit or on foot with just a few awed friends for company two days from the trailhead, and not seen something profoundly beautiful. The park's magic is in its accessibility. On a hazy, claustrophobic day in Denver, one can look west and know that just an hour away, hiding impossibly behind the particulate in the air, is a panorama of natural beauty on a scale that puts daily life in its proper perspective.
My work buddy had never been west of the Mississippi River and was anxious as soon as the road tilted slightly upwards as we weaved toward Estes Park. I made the most of this by repeatedly taking my hands off the steering wheel to fiddle with the radio and point out elk or cyclists or breaks in the tree line. He countered by repeatedly imploring me to keep both hands on the wheel and ease off the accelerator a bit as he snapped pictures out the car window.
I learned long ago that any photos I took would insult my memory of what the views actually looked like. There's just no way to capture the totality of such an impressive landscape and the depth and colors and crispness of the mountains always seems too compressed and demagnified through the lens of a camera. Maybe I'm just a bad photographer. In spite of this, I had packed my camera just in case, but I had no plans to use it. I just wanted to get to the visitor's center and sit and watch and be still.
It was late afternoon and the sun was starting to set. The Alpine Visitor's Center at Rocky Mountain National Park is right at 12,000 feet and even in August it gets really cold in the evening. We were not dressed for this at all, but a lenticular cloud was hovering right above the peak at the visitor's center and as the sun dipped, it did this:
Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time. The photos still don't do it justice.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Ancient Economics: The Great Wife of Lot Debate
This is a repost from a few years ago. It's a transcript of an email conversation between some of my friends and I and, dammit, I'm posting it again because it's still one of the funniest things I've ever read. This is what happens when young professionals educated at a Christian university who have a penchant for bullshit try to look busy in their entry level jobs.
Doug: Is salt rendered from a human being considered kosher? Is this a moot point as Lot's wife was transformed by God Himself? Surely her value as salt would go up significantly if both Jews and Gentiles could consume her. Also, and I just thought of this, was she a pillar in grain form? Or, was she just a giant pillar of rock salt? I think the rock salt would be much more valuable but also more difficult to sell. You're really looking at a single buyer in that scenario because not many people would have the shekels to shell out for a wife-sized rock of salt. Either way, surely the novelty of a wife-sized (and shaped) pillar of salt would add a few bits to the price. It's not everyday you see something like that!
Barrett: You guys are morons...hello, this is famous salt. Even at the time everyone had to have been talking about it. You don't sell it for consumption, you sell it as a collector's item. It's not that the shape would add value, it is the fame of the incident. I mean, you don't eat God's salt. Otherwise, he just might eat you.
Chris: Right now a 9 oz. bottle of all natural sea salt will run you about $3. Let's call it $.33/oz. Worst case scenario: You sell this as all natural Dead Sea salt (let's call that a 25% premium) at $.41/oz. You're looking at a 105lbs lady, which is 1680 oz., or almost $700. I think that's about what Barrett pays for a lady these days. Better case scenario: You sell this as God's chosen salt, market it to the Thomas Kincaid crowd, and you get $25/oz., or $42,000. Best case scenario: You lick it until it's gone. That's just my take.
Doug: Today the average yearly inflation of the US dollar is around 3%. In 1864 it was close to 27%. I have no idea what that would translate to in BCE, but let's ballpark it at an average of 10% for, oh, say the last 4,000 years...that's quite a bit more than Chris' $700.00. I'm no math major, but I think that's somewhere around $2,658,673,870,446.40...not including Barrett's fame factor.
Barrett: Ahhh, Doug, clearly you are retarded. You account for inflation (good) whilst (yes, I dropped a 'whilst' on you) forgetting about the degradation of salt. 105 pounds of salt several thousand years ago would not leave you with 105 pounds of salt today, especially not if we're talking about sea salt, which evaporates 12.4% faster than regular salt on average in the area around the Dead Sea, with that percentage rising as high as 15.9% in some areas of the Middle East. So, to an extent, it would depend on the storage facility of the salt and where that facility was located. Also, you have to hire a trustworthy supervisor to secure the premises. Otherwise, you may end up with some crazy bastard like Chris licking up all of your salt and destroying your investment. At least, that's my not-so-humble opinion on it. But for the preceding crazy licker watching the salt, I think you would be best off immediately selling the salt and becoming a shylock.
Scotty: You are all idiots. The real lesson of the situation is that money, being the root of all evil, is not to be worshipped or even sought after in the Face of The Lord. Thus, you spread the salt to the winds without making a cent and start telling people your new philosophy about money, setting the groundwork for an empire of pamphlet sales, public speaking engagements, an internationally televised religious hour, and a lucrative stone-selling business that nets you several hundred million a year by your fifth year of operation. No matter how much you could make off the salt - odd commodity or just plain spice - it would be a one time event at a fixed amount. Swearing it off and convincing others that you're enlightened keeps the green rollin' in year after year. Suckers.
Barrett: Ahhh, Scott...cute. But seriously, men are talking here. Your pamphlets and the stones are going to cost money. Where will you get that money? Simple: From my shylock business where I would charge you 20% interest plus 56% of the profits. It's good to be on top. You have just given away your most valuable possession and, other than my shylockery, you have no way of attaining capital to invest in your grand scheme. So you have a choice to make...make both of us rich or you can actually be poor the rest of your life with no way to get your venture off the ground. And in that case, I will still be rich because I would find some other sap to suck the life (and money) out of. In the fictional world of ancient economics my grandkids and their grandkids would all be taken care of. If present me could go back in time and help out my ancient ancestors, I bet present me would still be living high on the hog from all the wealth I would have accumulated (assuming my time machine could bring me back to the future).
Scotty: And that's when Barrett showed everyone why no one should hire him as a lawyer. I'd be able to pass by your shylockery -as well as the haberdashery - while on one of my Inspirational Walks With the Master (C) (149.99 shekels). Overhead? Zero. That's called pure profit. And from there I'll order some pamphlets. Oh, and I'll order rocks too since they definitely don't just grow on trees.
 |
| Money maker? |
Brando: Since I'm the first one to reply, I'll take this one guys... *AHEM* Your mom is a nubile 105 pound teen skank of Sodom. Burn.
Rob: Once again, you have all missed the point. One interpretation of the Biblical account of Lot's wife being smote to salt is that it is a metaphor for her inability to reproduce (i.e. salting the fields of your enemies in ancient times). You have no salt to sell, but you may save some money on birth control if you go the prostitution route.
Doug: Ok, I'm back and I have brought myself up to speed on the Great Wife of Lot Debate. I have to say, you're all a bunch of douchebag intellectuals. Firstly, salt doesn't evaporate. Salt water evaporates, but you (and by 'you' I am referring to Barrett) are suggesting that salt somehow sublimates at an amazing rate only in the area around the Dead Sea. Now, while your professional caliber BS may have convinced your fiancee to sleep with you, it cannot convince me that a solid can suddenly turn into a gas under normal climatic conditions. By storing Lot's wife in a relatively dry place (and Christ knows there are a ton of them in that neck of the woods) she should be fairly degradation free and ready for sale years into the future...like 4,000 years into the future. I am willing to concede, however, that having a licker like Chris anywhere around your prized salt is simply bad business. As for the argument that Lot's 105 pound Skank of Sodom would be more valuable plying her trade at $400.00/night, you need a bag on your head. Let us assume that she starts flashing ass for money at the age of 14 at $400.00/night. The average life expectancy of a woman in that era was 30 years old. This gives her 16 working years. For argument's sake, let's assume that she could work every night. That's still only a lifetime earning of $2,336,000.00. That doesn't hold a candle to my $2,658,673,870,446.40 rock of salt, and we're not even considering the days she would lose from getting knocked up (metaphors aside) and not working on the Sabbath, not to mention the fact that her $400.00 price tag would diminish as she crept toward the big 3-0. So much for your nubile ancient world fantasies. Sicko.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Monday is a Honey Badger and Other Days of The Week
Sometimes, when you have too much time to do nothing, you come up with all sorts of ridiculous thoughts and ideas. For instance, who was the first guy to eat an egg? I'll tell you who he was. He was bored and hungry. Bored enough and hungry enough to eat something that came from a chicken's ass. Fact.
I was similarly afflicted the other day, minus the hunger part. Unfortunately, my idea was not quite so earth-shattering as the eggs-as-food thing (omelettes...mmmmmmmm). That's a once in a millennium discovery. No, instead I set about determining which animals best represented each day of the week. What can I say? I wrestle with complex issues on a daily basis and live life on a razor's edge.
Monday is a Honey Badger
By now, most people have heard of the Honey Badger. YouTube did its part as did Tyrann Mathieu. But my first awareness of the Honey Badger came from Ben Thompson's blog, Badass of The Week. Read it here! There are certain life lessons to be learned from the Honey Badger. One of them is this: If something is named in an incongruous way, a sweet name and a mean name stuck together in one name for instance, that thing is not to be fucked with. At the very least it's unpredictable. Puff Adder. Eyelash Viper. Honey Badger. Marshmallow Shark...ok, I made that one up, but you get the point. Anyhow, Thompson makes the point that the Honey Badger has been known to run beneath male lions and bite off their balls! Now, what's Monday if not a chomp to the balls?
Tuesday is a Tiger Shark
Everyone knows about Monday and what a bastard it can be. Just like everyone knows about the Great White and gets that super panicky get-me-out-of-the-water-right-now feeling when they go to the beach and/or dive into the deep end of a swimming pool and the word "shark" creeps into his/her mind. Thanks, Spielberg. You literally ruined any and all bodies of water for me. What most people don't know is that the Tiger Shark is responsible for a huge percentage of shark attacks worldwide, can swim into rivers and estuaries, can grow to 20 feet, and eats almost anything. There you are taking a nice swim in the river having survived Monday and OOPS! there goes your leg. Didn't see that coming at all. Huzzah, it's Tuesday!
Wednesday is a Hippopotamus
No one likes Wednesday. Wednesday is that day you just kind of trudge through to get to Thursday and eventually the weekend. You're never going to have a long weekend that includes a Wednesday and once Tuesday is over with you're not really stoked to be into Wednesday. Imagine we're part of an expedition in deepest, darkest Africa. We've avoided the the lions and hyenas and painted dogs and black mambas and cobras and crocodiles and brain burrowing beetles and we really just want to get to the end of the expedition. We just have to paddle our ridiculously flimsy canoes over this river and we'll be more than halfway there. Cake, right? There are just a few beefy, amphibious cow looking things over there. What kind of noise can they bring? Plenty. Hippo tusks can grow to over a foot. Hippos are intensely territorial. Hippos have been known to flip ridiculously flimsy canoes. Hippos can hold their breath for over six minutes. Hippos shit underwater. Hippos have no sweat glands so they secrete a red viscous fluid that looks a lot like blood. Blood. That's just the kind of insane BS you don't expect that always seems to characterize Wednesdays.
Thursday is a Panda Bear
Pandas are cute. There's no way around this. They're like Oreos and cotton balls got together in a test tube somewhere and made a baby. They laze around bamboo forests and eat shoots and star in Disney movies and are generally loved by everyone, even poachers. Seriously, Panda meat is unpalatable so poachers rarely intentionally kill them. Isn't that adorable? At the end of the day though, a Panda is still a fucking bear...and Thursday is still a weekday.
Friday is a Penguin
Penguins are baller. Friday is baller. No one has anything bad to say about a penguin. They swim like torpedoes, are literally ice cold, and have a freaking permanent tux. They're like the Frank Sinatra of the animal kingdom and perfectly embody everything Friday is about. Put on your tux, have fun, and be cool. In the words of Lyle Lovett and his quirky genius, "I don't go for fancy cars, diamond rings, or movie stars. I go for penguins. Oh Lord, I go for penguins." I don't know what the hell that means, but I know it's cool.
Saturday is a Dolphin
Dolphins: Flips. Jumps. Frolicking. Social animals who hang out in pods. Talk a lot. Have sex for fun.
Saturdays: Active. Fun and frolic. Hang out with friends and catch up on the week. Good day for sex for fun.
I got a perfect score on the analogies section of the SAT. This is proof.
Sunday is a Koala Bear
Sunday is the laziest day of the week. Even God rested on Sunday and if God's taking the day off, then so am I. My friends in college consistently had No Shower Sundays. This is exactly what it sounds like. Wake up at noonish, mosey on out to the couch, eat, watch some TV, take a nap, eat some more, watch some more TV. Look, you've got a Honey Badger to deal with in just a few hours so you're going to need all the rest you can get. And when it comes to rest in the animal kingdom, there's only one animal in the conversation, the somnolent Koala Bear. Koalas on average sleep 22 hours out of every day. It's completely within the realm of possibility that a Koala could go to sleep Saturday night and not wake up until Monday morning. I don't advocate skipping from a dolphin to a Honey Badger, but if you want to take Koala Sunday to All Pro levels, that's your business.
So there's your week. I'm giving you pearls here. Have a careful Hippo Wednesday!
I was similarly afflicted the other day, minus the hunger part. Unfortunately, my idea was not quite so earth-shattering as the eggs-as-food thing (omelettes...mmmmmmmm). That's a once in a millennium discovery. No, instead I set about determining which animals best represented each day of the week. What can I say? I wrestle with complex issues on a daily basis and live life on a razor's edge.
Monday is a Honey Badger
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| "What the fuck are you looking at?" |
Tuesday is a Tiger Shark
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| Nom, Nom, Nom! |
Wednesday is a Hippopotamus
 |
| Totally deserving of Jawsesque cello music |
Thursday is a Panda Bear
 |
| "Get a little closer and you'll see how cute I am, bitches." |
Friday is a Penguin
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| "It's the freakin' weekend, I'm about to have me some fun!" |
Saturday is a Dolphin
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| "Haaaaaaaay!" |
Saturdays: Active. Fun and frolic. Hang out with friends and catch up on the week. Good day for sex for fun.
I got a perfect score on the analogies section of the SAT. This is proof.
Sunday is a Koala Bear
 |
| "My sleep number is Eucalyptus." |
So there's your week. I'm giving you pearls here. Have a careful Hippo Wednesday!
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