I had the shittiest dream

I dreamed the toilet overflowed in dramatic and horrifying fashion.

Way more shit came up than originally went in. There was also cat food coming out of the toilet. It was dry food and then also large chunks of seafood in serving sizes meant for a person, which my cats don’t eat. I was plunging furiously with a plunger that had seen better days. It was early in the morning and I had to clean it up before Steve got up to get ready for work. I warned him not to poop until he got to work but he said, “I don’t think it will hold.”

Mercifully, I woke up, so I missed how it ended.

This happened to me twice at the shore house. Not the cat food in the toilet — just the general idea of overflowing. The first incident was a few years ago. We had the bathroom used by the largest number of people and I guess after a few days of people pooping, the toilet had too much. I woke up to pee one morning and it overflowed. “Shit,” I muttered, aptly. I cleaned up but couldn’t fall back to sleep after that and it kind of set the tone for the day.

It happened again last summer. The odd thing was that we were in our own bathroom and nobody else was using it and the toilet still overflowed. It’s not like I had been crapping more than usual, either. It was intractably blocked and we had to call the real estate company so they could send a plumber over. The plumber said it happens frequently in that house. Maybe the week before it had started to stop up with the previous guests and I was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This was especially annoying because we were conscientious enough to buy single-ply toilet paper that wouldn’t stop up the toilet and it still didn’t work. Is there anything more annoying than fixing a clogged toilet, especially on vacation?

Bathroom malfunctions bother me because we only have one so we can’t just start using the other toilet when something happens. Our toilet once had been draining slowly and I bought this unclogging solution just to prevent an actual overflow. It was some kind of acid that was so dangerous that the plastic bottle came wrapped in a plastic bag. I was too nervous to try it and risk hurting myself so I returned it. Luckily, the toilet started draining on its own.

Who's Amused by Virginia Woolf?

I was in New York for work and saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway. It had been years since I’d seen a Broadway show, but I figured, what the hell. What else was I going to do on a frigid Friday night? I did like the play. It was not as great as the movie but then again, the play did not feature the corpses of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton so maybe it’s an unfair comparison.

What struck me most if how the audience members found so much of it funny, at least in act one. Until George breaks a bottle and the show starts getting darker, people were yukking it up. Edward Albee’s play is of course darkly funny but when I saw the movie, I didn’t think it was ha-ha funny. Yet everyone was laughing.

How much do our preconceptions and cues and fellow audience members influence our perception of art?

I had always read about Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a dark, twisted drama so I responded to the movie as such. But on some Broadway website, I saw the play marketed as a comedy. So did people go in expecting some laugh-a-thon and respond accordingly? “Husband and wife drink themselves into cirrhosis and pretend they have a child and then kill off the child just to fuck with another couple.” Fun for the whole family!

There was no laugh track for the movie, of course, so there was no comic relief when George and Martha started needling one another. It was all just deliciously nasty and the whole movie played out like an evening that was interminable and uncomfortable. At the play, one person laughs and it becomes infectious. The audience members were not wrong. They just cast the events of Virginia Woolf in a different light for me. 

A lot of people really hate live studio audiences for TV but I never minded them. The common refrain is “I hate being told when to laugh” but I see TV shows with studio audiences as more like watching a play. Fellow audience members can laugh and reveal a joke that you might have missed. One person laughs and then everybody else is laughing and it’s just fun and harmless and a great way to kill a Friday night.

See a $50? Pick it up and all the day you'll have good luck

My quixotic quest of fitness paid off briefly last Saturday. While I was out running/walking, I found a $50 on the sidewalk. There was nobody around so I kept it. That’s the rule about finding money: If it’s in a wallet with a name, you return it; if there’s ID, try to find the owner. The cash was near the shady apartments so I figured it was drug money anyway and it’s better off taking Steve and me to dinner.

This is only the second time I can remember finding cash. Once when I worked at Burger King, I was cleaning up the parking lot and found $20. Back then, this would have bought two tanks of gas. Then the rest of my co-workers wanted to sweep up the lot since they might find some cash, too. It’s superstition that you would find money in the same spot twice but, wouldn’t you know it, I walked by the same spot Sunday and looked for more cash, as if the sidewalk were an ATM.

Aside from these two instances of finding cash, that’s about it for me and luck. Sure, I’ve been lucky enough to have my family and friends, health, etc., but I’m talking about the fun luck. The luck that lets you blow a little money and not feel guilty about it.

I did once hit for $400 at a slot machine and then stopped gambling rather than blow my winnings. I’m not one for gambling. I tried to play blackjack once and just could not handle playing the dealer and several other people. Whenever I would play the slots, I would watch the $20 bills slipping into the machines and think, “There goes a tank of gas, the phone bill, movie tickets,” etc. The last time I was in Las Vegas for business, I found a penny slot, which would at least let me kill time and blow that $20 in smaller increments.

I’m also almost completely ignorant when it comes to playing the lottery. The only tickets I’ve ever had were the ones people gave to me as gifts, none of which hit. I’ve never bought a lottery ticket, not even during those insane multitrillion-dollar payments, and wouldn’t know how. I would be That Guy who is trying to buy tickets and taking 20 minutes because I don’t know how to pick numbers, holding up the more experienced people behind me. I figure instead of playing the lottery, I could get the same experience by throwing $10 directly in the trash. It’s the same outcome.

I’m just averse to a lot of risk and will always take the easy bet. If I were on a game show and had reached a certain level where my winnings were guaranteed, I would gladly stop there and take my winnings home with me. If I’d won $50,000 and the host told me I could go for $1 million but could risk going home with nothing if I lost, I would disappoint the studio audience but I’d go home quite happy with my $50,000. Money I already have is always more important than money I may never have. 

America Betrayed

Last night I ran out and bought a string of pearls just so I would have something to clutch as I ponder the profound horror that Beyonce may have lip-synched “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the inauguration.

Just writing that last sentence made me pull my office trash can over and vomit into it. Beyonce completely disgraced America and the president. I felt very cheated by the performance I watched for free. I was also disillusioned. You mean there might be (sob) artifice in certain works of art?! That sometimes something isn’t as real as we’d like it to be?! That every move by a pop singer might not be infallibly authentic?!

Now I don’t believe in anything. How can I when all around me … is lies?!

I am devastated. I have never before heard of any performer not singing live. I look back over what this implies about our shared cultural heritage and I feel the deep chill of disillusionment. You’re telling me when the record skipped during Milli Vanilli’s performance, it was a recording and not one of them doing a remarkable ventriloquism impression of a record scratch? You’re suggesting that when Prince sang a medley of his hits on an awards show while chewing gum, he wasn’t just really good at multitasking? And when Oasis performed on Top of the Pops and the Gallagher brothers switched vocals and instruments, they didn’t just have uncannily similar voices? You mean it’s not always real?!?

I feel personally betrayed retroactively by every performer. I demand an apology, not only from Beyonce, but from everyone in the entertainment industry. I can no longer enjoy music.

I do hold onto a glimmer of hope that Beyonce did not cheapen America and lip-synch. I have spent many hours analyzing the video of the national anthem with the same scrutiny that investigators gave to the Zapruder film. It is far too soon to draw any conclusions, and will require weeks of close study, but there is still a possibility that Beyonce did actually sing live. Now that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has concluded hearing testimony on Benghazi, I hear it will turn its attention to this matter of national importance.

Even now in the United States, brother fights brother on whether or not Beyonce was actually singing. We weigh the evidence and ponder the far-reaching consequences of the truth. Due to this debate, we have never been more divided in our country’s history — not even during the Civil War.

I can’t stop crying. America died.

I had the most inconsiderate dream

I dreamed I was in line at the supermarket. The woman in front of me was halfway through checking out when she decided to go to the bathroom. This annoyed me because I only had a few items. You would think the cashier would find a way to ring me up while the woman was in the bathroom, but no. I asked if she could take me but she just gave me a blank look.

The woman was in the bathroom for several minutes and when she came out, I decided to confront her. I asked her if she really needed to go to the bathroom right at that moment. Couldn’t she wait just a few minutes until her order was totaled and she was out of everyone’s way?

“Uh, no. It couldn’t wait,” she said.

Excuse me? Are you copping an attitude with me after you inconvenienced me?

There may have been a big throwdown after that in the checkout aisle but I woke up. It’s inconsiderate to make people wait behind you because you’re screwing around. I get in and out of line as fast as possible. I never cause any problems with “my credit card won’t go through so they have to call the bank” or any other nonsense. That’s the worst: When the person in front of me has a transaction that’s causing a problem and they sigh and look at me as if to say, “Can you believe this ridiculous store?” when it’s the customer who is the problem.

I shy from confrontation like it’s the bubonic plague but there was a time when I did decide to confront someone at the supermarket checkout. A woman in front of me in the express lane had well over 15 items so I pointed it out to her in a polite way. She told me the other cashiers said she could use the express lane, I guess in the interest of expediting things overall in the store. She looked kind of embarrassed, as if she knew it would backfire and someone would call her on it.

The fact that the store told her she could get in the express lane was explanation enough for me so the issue was closed. I felt bad. The one time I decide to confront someone and she’s a nice, apologetic woman with a good excuse.

Now that I remember it, there was another time when I called someone out for bad behavior in line. I had to have been 9 or 10 and was in line at the snack bar at the pool. I was at the front of the line but when the cashier asked who was next, the adult in back of me tried to order instead of me, speaking right over my head. I said, “Excuse me but I was first” and gave my order. I remember being proud for speaking up at a young age.

What kind of asshole tries to jump in line in front of a kid?

Full of Shit

Is everybody full of shit?

The latest shattered public narrative is that of Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame who admitted his girlfriend, who he said died of cancer a few months ago, did not actually exist. I have been oddly fascinated by this. The media had extensively reported on the existence of the dead long-distance girlfriend but I had never before heard of this story (probably because I don’t follow college sports).

I don’t buy it that Te’o was the victim of some hoax. I think he was in on it. He appears to have changed his tune about whether or not he ever met her. There are cynics who say Te’o made this whole thing up to aid his campaign for the Heisman Trophy and some other people think he made up the girlfriend as a beard since he was intimidated by coming out. Maybe he’s just a young, single guy who made up a hot girlfriend who lived somewhere else and then one lie led to another and it got out of hand. (Then why kill her off in dramatic fashion? Why not just say “we broke up” and lose track of her?) I don’t know what to make of this soap opera.

What I do know is that I don’t feel betrayed by this deception because I never bought into the story, since I had been unaware of the story until yesterday. I feel bad for the guy because he’s been so humiliated over something that doesn’t really affect the public that much. What I do feel betrayed by is the concept of accurate reporting, which does have ramifications for the public. Here are some questions:

In the whole time numerous mainstream media outlets reported this guy and his girlfriend, nobody thought to look her up and interview her? It’s not like she lived on the moon. You can track down anybody these days but nobody bothered.

Nobody looked into the inconsistencies of the given dates of death of his girlfriend and grandmother? Some accounts said they died hours apart and some said the girlfriend died days later. If you were Te’o or his family, wouldn’t every detail of those deaths be seared into you, especially that this was only a few months ago? I remember the dates and sequence of events surrounding my grandparents’ deaths, including just what was happening when I got the news and I’m sure most other people remember such details.

I don’t know why nobody dug deeper. Maybe it’s due to a lack of resources at media organizations. Maybe nobody in the media wanted to doubt the story — guy’s girlfriend dies of cancer the same day (roughly) as his grandmother dies and guy goes out and kicks ass on the football field — since it was “too good to check,” as the journalism saying goes. Maybe Notre Dame went along with the feel-good fiction to cover up the fact that they have (ahem) a football player rape scandal.

Any way you play it, it’s embarrassing to the industry that no reporter at any venerable institution was diligent enough to check on these details until Deadspin did some phenomenal reporting work.

A liar who offends me more is Lance Armstrong. What bothers me wasn’t so much the fact that he doped because other cyclists were probably doing the same. What bothers me is that he lied repeatedly about it for years, going so far as to sue and intimidate people who tried to blow the whistle on him. He intimated to Oprah that he had sued so many people for accusing him of doping that he couldn’t remember them all. What bothers me is that he was an asshole about it for years and used cancer as a shield against criticism.

I’m sure Livestrong did do good for cancer but that doesn’t mean he’s not still an asshole. One person can do right and wrong at the same time and the contradiction shouldn’t blow people’s minds. People can contain multitudes.

The next time we debate “are athletes role models” or “where have the heroes gone,” that’s a key point to keep in mind: People can be heroes and villains. Nobody is as perfect as you want him to be.

Please Select Entrée

The scene is Brian and Steve’s wedding reception. The toasts have ended and dinner is about to be served. A waiter brings over a tray of hot dogs and sets them before the grooms.

Steve: Uh, what’s this? Is this a joke?

Brian: You’re serving us hot dogs?

Waiter: Don’t you remember? You told us you both wanted the hot dog entrée.

Steve: That isn’t right. I’m a vegetarian.

Brian: And I just can’t stand hot dogs. I never could.

Waiter: Maybe this will help whet your appetite.

The waiter sprays a liberal amount of ketchup onto both hot dogs. Steve starts to gag and falls out of his chair.

Steve: So this is what a stroke feels like …

Brian: Oh God. Oh God.

A waitress walks up to the table carrying a plate of a certain steaming green vegetable.

Waitress: I have a special treat for you, Brian. I’ve brought you …

Brian: Oh no …

Waitress: … a special dish …

Brian: Please, Lord, no …

Waitress: … of spinach!

Brian: Aaaaahh!

The waitstaff and all the guests laugh maniacally. Lightning flashes. Thunder crashes. Suddenly, the scene shifts to Brian’s bedroom.

Brian: Aaaaah! (sits up in a panic) Oh God, don’t tell me …

Brian rushes to his office and over turns piles of paper. He rips open a sample wedding invitation and checks the RSVP card.

Brian (reading the card to himself): “Please select one of the following entrees: Crab cakes, steak or vegetarian.” Oh, thank God. It was just a dream.

Suddenly, Steve bursts in the room, covered in ketchup.

Steve: Or was it?!

Lightning flashes, thunder crashes and they both scream.

Bang Bang

What was almost funny (for want of a better term) to me in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting was how some people kept saying “it’s not the time” to talk about gun control but everyone else ignored those people and talked about gun control anyway. The people who didn’t want to talk about gun control after the shooting will never want to talk about gun control. They’re hoping people will keep quiet during the mourning period (because as 20 parents buried their first graders during Christmas, God forbid America had to endure the monumental faux pas of a conversation about how to spare another 20 parents from burying their kids) and when anyone brings up gun control after the first mourning period expires, more shootings occur in public places and the mourning periods overlap and it’s never polite to raise one’s voice above a whisper about guns. Of course, you are right if you said it’s not the time to talk about gun control. The time to talk about sane solutions for keeping guns from insane people was years ago.

Rather than trying to repeal the Second Amendment, I think we should put public pressure on gun manufacturers and retailers to limit the manufacture and sale of guns and ammunition that are designed in quantities only made for killing people. This would respect the rights of responsible gun owners who want simple revolvers to protect their families against intruders and would be an extra-Constitutional means of keeping guns away from people who would shoot up schools or movie theaters.

Not many people talk about the gun companies in general or the way those companies profit indirectly from gun massacres. Whenever there’s a Sandy Hook or Aurora shooting, some National Rifle Association members freak out that Obama is coming for their guns and they run to buy more guns and ammo. (It was always odd to me that people assumed Obama would take their guns because through his whole first term, I don’t remember him saying one word about restricting Second Amendment rights.) I saw some data that gun sales did rise after Newtown. Why not pressure such companies that have made a ton of money after some nut used their products in such horrifying fashion?

I understand that the Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as an individual right to own firearms. But just because someone has a right to arms, that doesn’t mean it has to be easy for them to acquire submachine guns that can hold large quantities of ammo without reloading. There should be public pressure on such manufacturers not to make such insane weapons available to the general public. This would not violate the amendment. You’d still have the right to high-level firearms but they would be rare and that would hopefully keep them away from the crazy and/or evil. Arms would undoubtedly still fall into the hands of mass murderers but isn’t it worth trying this before we just declare that it will fail?

I liken this to the First Amendment’s protection of art some people find offensive. You have the right to watch a movie with the vilest filth imaginable but that doesn’t mean every movie theater has to carry that movie. You just have to search out that content. Just because the Constitution gives you the right to something, that doesn’t mean everyone has to lay out the red carpet to give you the easiest possible access to it.

We could also pressure retailers to put policies in place to deter potential mass murderers from getting hold of guns. This would also respect the Second Amendment because it wouldn’t be a law that would bar certain people from guns — it would be Wal-Mart’s policy. It’s like how a 10-year-old has a First Amendment right to play a violent video game but game manufacturers have voluntary rating systems to discourage that, all due to societal pressure.

I read a lot of commentary during the gun debate by people who reflexively said, “No, that won’t work” when anyone proposed any gun control of any type. How do we know these things won’t work? After watching elementary school kids led with their eyes closed past the bodies of their classmates, don’t you think it might be worth, you know, giving gun control a shot?

Don't Try This at Home

Once in awhile, I get a reminder (aside from the gray hair and paunch) that I’m getting older. Many of these reminders leave me glad to be older.

For instance, I can’t laugh at videos of people hurting themselves. If it’s a video of someone getting hit in the balls or the cinnamon challenge, it’s harmless and I know the person isn’t hurt so I can laugh. I’m not so old that I’m too mature to enjoy people doing stupid shit.

What’s not so funny to me anymore is some videos where the person might be seriously hurt. On Tosh.0, they showed a video of someone who had wiped out on a motorcycle during some kind of race. While the rider lay on the ground, another motorcycle plowed into him. Both motorcycles then left the frame of the video so we don’t know how he ended up. He might be OK or he might be dead. That just isn’t funny. There was another video of someone blowing out birthday candles when his friend slammed his head into the cake. The birthday boy then just lay his head on the ruined cake, motionless. His friend picked his head up and the head fell right back down again. This person was probably unconscious. It just wasn’t funny.

Meanwhile, the studio audience is just yukking it up. Maybe shows like Tosh.0 have a disclaimer that nobody got seriously hurt but I’ve never seen it. There’s usually a disclaimer of “don’t try this at home,” but it’s still too elliptical for me to find funny.

I also am increasingly verifying that drugs have zero appeal for me, every time I read an article by someone on drugs or who got off drugs. There’s this former magazine editor Cat Marnell, who quit her job so she could smoke PCP and sit on a roof looking at the stars. This is literally what she told a magazine. I’ve read some of her memoirs of smoking PCP and running around at all hours and that lifestyle has no appeal to me. It’s not in the least glamorous. When people write recovery memoirs, even though they detail the horror their lives became, they still acknowledge the fun side of drugs that led them to addiction. I just don’t see the fun side in any of it. It sounds sordid and undignified. Every depiction of drugs makes me glad I don’t do them. Whenever I see an episode of Breaking Bad, I am thrilled that I never got into meth or anything else because the high isn’t worth it.

So I’m never going to look back and wish I had misbehaved more. I may have led a boring life but at least I have a house, a steady job, a mind that isn’t addled and I don’t look 10 years older than my age. I’ve seen what drugs can do and I’m quite content to sit home and read a book, thanks.

Getting Shit Done

If you suddenly felt bereft of jollity last Saturday afternoon, that was just me officially ending Christmas for everyone. Once I put the last string of lights back into its box to lie dormant for the summer, the holiday season had ended for everyone.

I celebrated the 12 days of Christmas, thanks to unused vacation days combined with company holidays. My vacation was a mix of family stuff, sitting around relaxing and getting shit done.

There was the three-day trip to Ohio for Steve’s family Christmas party. It was fun and we left with our Yankee swap gifts of a rubber chicken and a toilet paper holder shaped like a bear. The eight-hour drive each way did leave me beat so it was nice on Christmas Eve to relax at home and just stare at the blinking lights on the tree.

I had a few days after that to sit around the house in the afternoon and stare at the aforementioned lights. It was therapeutic after running around the previous few weeks with Christmas preparations and staying late at work for over a week, since we were on deadline and had to send the issue before the holidays. I did have some work to do on our website while I was off but it wasn’t onerous.

That’s one of my favorite parts of using vacation time the week between Christmas and New Year’s: Sitting in the living room and having the time to listen to my new music and read my new books. I so rarely get the chance to do so that I feel like a kid when it happens. Just half a week of that is enough to recharge me.

I also continued to get our shit together for the wedding. The main thing was finalizing the design for our favors, which will be glasses with a secret special design. We also wrote the ceremony, sifted through the invitations list and looked at some rings. Steve says we seem to be on track, at least according to the timeline by the good people at the Knot.

Most importantly, I took care of the fun part: I booked our honeymoon. Five nights in Fort Lauderdale, where we will sit by the pool and relax. Not that the wedding itself isn’t fun, but after the flurry of planning stresses me out, I will really need a few days to stare out at whatever body of water and concentrate on nothing more than reading a book.

Run!

I killed our treadmill. After nearly three years of enduring my constant footfalls, it died last month. It had been making noises and the conveyor belt finally just went askew and snapped. We’re not going to replace it (there are other financial priorities in the next few months and we’d like to redo the basement anyway) so for now it’s folded up downstairs. It had a good run and so did I.

For now, I’ve been running outside. It turns out that it’s noticeably harder to run on the sidewalk than it is on a treadmill. I thought I was a badass for running 2.5 miles four times a week but I am now winded when running a fraction of that up and down Kirkwood Highway. I started a route but have to alternately run and walk it since I can’t run that distance yet.

It’s also a lot colder outdoors than it is in our basement, especially in January. Who knew, right? I was out Wednesday night in below-freezing temperatures and my hands were numb. It’s harder to breathe in that type of cold and when I alternate between walking and running, I also alternate between sweating and shivering.

This is because I don’t have the clothes for running outdoors. I was used to running at home and would just wear shorts and no shirt because why wash extra clothes? I’m not running shirtless in public under any circumstances so I got some moisture wicking shirts. But they’re short sleeves so I still have to wear something long sleeve over them. Track pants were too bulky so I bought those running tights to wear beneath shorts. I didn’t wear gloves but maybe I should have. I also didn’t wear a hat because I hate hats. I’m wearing of wearing accessories because I knew I would just start to sweat halfway through the run. Do I want to be too cold or too hot? Luckily, once it warms up, this won’t be a problem and I can just wear shorts and a T-shirt.

I probably looked like a freak in my hybrid, half-assed running outfit. But it was dark and I don’t care what I look like. I never understood the impulse to look fashionable at the gym because working out is one place where you should prize utilitarianism above all. I probably also looked like a freak the other night: Some guy running down the street on the first day that New Year’s resolutions usually start.

The New Me

New Year’s resolutions officially begin on Jan. 2 because New Year’s Day is a holiday. But why go full force into a year of self-improvement? Let’s ease into The New You, much like one eases into drawstring pants, rather than expending the truly herculean effort of putting on pants with a real button and zipper just to leave the house. Here are some resolutions that will be easy to keep.

Turn 39

Eat at least two meals a day, every day

Walk (sometimes)

Go to work and do some work

Continue not smoking

Read something, anything

Check my email

Watch a little TV

Listen to some music

Pay my mortgage

Drive

Not eat butter by the stick

Edit things

Turn off the shower when not using it

Get at least four hours of sleep a night

Cut down on vodka

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