The Unexpected Burden of Extraordinary Charm

In life it's often easier simply not to talk to people. Not in a rude way, and not to irritate, but simply because most of the time people are doing their thing and I am doing my thing (even if "my thing" is to get kitty litter and a frozen pizza in the next 20 minutes so I can make it back from the gym to watch a Blazers' game I've got time shifted from their east coast roadtrip (parentheticals that are longer than the primary sentence are the bomb, yo, especially if they have sub-parentheticals (like these))).

As part of my self-awareness campaign this millenium, though, I have made efforts to (*gasp*) communicate with other human beings in non-critical situations. I say "hi" to people much more often on the street (ok, 99% of the time they are women, but still...) and I try to be more than just quietly polite to people who work at stores I shop at.

Unfortunately, being friendly sometimes has unexpected costs.

Yesterday I was shopping in downtown Seattle with Canberry, checking out the Black Friday (no racist) sales and maybe getting some clothes that I can wear for two days before they are infused with three colors of cat hair.

The third or fourth store was actually one that I was confident I was going to buy some stuff, so we split up; her shopping through the upstairs for women's clothes and me headed downstairs for the guys'. After some time, I had selected my five items and was waiting in line.

Once I got to the front of the line, in keeping with my attempts at being friendly, I started talking with the chick ringing me up (hehe) and in the time that it took for the items to be rung up, folded, and paid for, we had shared three mini-stories (and, shockingly, only two of them came from me). I'm sure she had spoken to about a thousand people and she was just being nice (although I'm not sure that she tells a story about her friend's big boobs to everyone she helps) but I walked away thinking, "Yep, I sure am I nice fellow. And I still got it!"

Ridiculous how one's mind works.

Fast forward a couple of hours. Canberry and I are getting dressed for a night in Ballard and I decided to wear the blazer that I had purchased. It fits great and looks fine and whatever and we mosey on down to catch taxicab. The two of us approach a street corner where two women were waiting, and I utter under my breath, "Taxi!" to the cab that is speeding away... and this little exchange occurs:

Me: How dare he not stop? Certainly he heard me! [Note: I doubt those were my exact words, but maybe...]
Chick at Street Corner: What did you say?
Me: I said, "Hey, ladies ... !"
Chicks at Street Corner: *giggle* *giggle*
Me: (Internally) Yep, I sure am I nice fellow. And I still got it!

So Canberry and I went to cross the street, with the chicks lagging behind us. Then one reengaged with me:

Chick at Street Corner: So you know you have a tag on your jacket?
Me: (Reaching around, expecting a paper tag) Oh, yeah? Thanks!
Chick at Street Corner: Yeah, it's one of those security tags. You shouldn't steal your clothes!Me: (Feeling the device, which was at the very bottom of the back of my jacket, by my butt) Oh, drat!
Chick at Street Corner: You can thank me now for saving your night!
Me: (Internally) Being friendly clearly leads to mockery.

I was a bit miffed at the store for not removing it and I was a bit embarrassed that I didn't notice that I had set off security sensors at several subsequent stores we'd visited. I also felt the unexpected burden of being nice to someone unnecessarily; if I had not been quite as charming, maybe the young woman at the store would have been less distracted and have done her job!

We wandered back to my place and I changed jackets and we were back out on the town. I need to go back to the store to get the stupid tag off, but at least Canberry was able to stroke my ego a bit by pointing out that the woman had to be checking out my butt to see the tag.

I still got it!

Ten Foods not to feed me

It's Thanksgiving week here in the USA, and we inevitably ignore the real meaning of the holiday (which I think involves a turkey and the Alamo) and focus on food. In that spirit (the food, not the Alamo), here are random things that I simply do not care for.

1. Meat on the bone. I know that any time meat is processed, there's the chance that there are going to be horrific elements (fingers, hooves, cell phone batteries) but I simply don't care... I will choose chicken strips over a chicken drumstick any time. There's something about gnawing on a bone that repulses me (no homophobe) and the effort:payoff ratio is way out of whack.

1a. Buffalo wings. This is a special case of dislike. I don't like the taste of most of the buffalo wings I've eaten and they are particularly messy... and I have odd memories of college involving dorm-mates sweating profusely while wolfing innumerable buffalo wings down. *shiver*

2. Meatloaf. This is an oddity insofar as it seems like I should like the whole dish based on the parts that construct it. Meatloaf, though, is one of the few foods that I actively despised as a child (my mom's cooking was otherwise more than acceptable; I actually had one encounter with cottage cheese where I informed my mother I would throw up if I had to eat it, she made me eat it, and I puked on the kitchen table... which is an awesome story and a case of a child training a parent through the use of projective vomiting) and I have no interest in trying loafs of meat until I find one I can stomach.

3. Corn on the cob. I consider this the closest thing to "vegetable on the bone" and as such I avoid it. I also hate when it gets stuck in my teeth and, again, it's much easier to let someone else remove the edible parts from the stupid cob.

4. Grapefruit. I like oranges and most citrus fruits I have tried. Grapefruit is a definite exception. I know that it's good for me, and I try it occasionally, but... yuck. It's like someone took orange juice and took out all the good stuff and added 151 and then removed the alcohol. And then that someone came and kicked me in the stomach. Gross.

5. Coffee. Crazy, given where I live, I know. But the smell of coffee is gross to me. The taste of coffee ice cream disgusts me. Kahlúa is more of the same, although if I drank enough of it in one sitting I might get over it at some point.

6. Scrambled Eggs/Fried Eggs. I love omelettes, and I can live with "scrambles"... but having unadulterated scrambled eggs to have to choke down grosses me out. Fried egg--whether with a hard yolk or not--grosses me out. Just grossness all around.

7. French toast. I love pancakes. I love crepes. I can handle waffles (although I don't like it when they scrape the roof of my mouth). French toast is close to these things, but just close enough to piss me off that I'm not eating one of the things I actually like. Internecine breakfast conflict is often the most traumatic, as we all know.

8. Sweet pickles. Seriously, how can there be both a God and sweet pickles? I'm pretty sure that that questions was at the heart of the Reformation.

9. Crabcakes. I'm not a fan of seafood generally, and crabcakes are actually something that I like the taste of... but I've had them two or three times and become remarkably sick. I have a working theory that I can keep them down unless I eat them during times of stress (e.g., finishing the bar exam or celebrating a career change). In any case, it's usually better safe than sorry... unlike most things on this list, though, I will eat crabcakes if they are the lesser of available evils (such as when I am actually confronted with that classic moral dilemma of sacrificing a thousand people on the other side of the world or eating well-prepared crabcakes from a nice restaurant).


10. Sauerkraut. I don't think I've ever even tried this. I also firmly believe that it smells like rancid housecleaning products.

So... there you go. Please don't offer me these things... or, if you must, please expect to enrage me and/or trigger my gag reflex. I don't like my gag reflex being triggered (no homophobe).

Gym Defrag

Everyone knows what disk defragmentation is, right? It's the process of optimizing how information is written on a disk drive (disc drive? Why do we have words the spelling of which is in such a gray (grey) zone)?) to allow it to be read more quickly.

Sometimes we need life defragmentation, right? Here's an example.

When I was funemployed (which happens to be a word recently included in the New Oxford American dictionary...) I would go to the gym to sort of punish myself. I couldn't sit around looking for jobs ALL day (you can see what I tended to do here, although I did end up hitting the gym more often towards the end) so I went to the gym and got the most out of the membership I'd pre-paid for three years' worth.

Needless to say, when one is working one (at least this one) really doesn't have extra energy for the gym after one works. And (this) one no longer can punish oneself for being funemployed, either.

And yet, I have to go to the gym or stop eating... or chub up. So I try to go to the gym occasionally.

I always have a small thrill of turning left (towards the gym) rather than right (towards my apartment), and I tell myself it's only about an hour. And it's good for me not to be obese.

The thing is that (unfortunately for me) other people have the same idea, and the gym near my place is small and crowded when I tend to go after work. So my ideal pattern for my gym time is not quite met.

Ideally, it would be:

1. Wait a short time for a changing room
2. Do some stretching
3. Lift some weights
4. Do some cardio
5. Lift some more weights
6. Stretch

Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that way. I'll represent something approximating reality here:

I wait way longer than expected for a changing room. Then I stretch much more because I am antsy to just DO something. Then I wait for a machine. Lift, wait (or, rather, lift weights, wait). Etc. Even in those cases when I stay as long as I plan on, I get less done.

This is where defragmentation comes in. I want to take ALL of the waiting time and push it to the end. I could do the waiting on the drive back to my place.

I'm not sure exactly how to make this happen, though. I'm open to suggestions...

When 6 + 6 = 10, Ed O = Pissed Off

Arithmetic is pretty straightforward most of the time. If you have six of something and add six more (without subtracting any and assuming base ten system), you have twelve of those things.

Let me demonstrate:

Easy, right?

Of course, a lot of life seems easy. Then weird paradigm shifts occur--like string theory and complex adaptive systems and online porn--and our world is turned upside down.

But a change in the status quo is often difficult and frustrating. Today I learned that six plus six does not always equal twelve. This revelation occurred at a pizza place near my office.

I stopped in for a sub sandwich. I enjoy sandwiches and I was hungry, so it seemed like a natural fit. Subway was a bit far away and I eat there a lot, so a local place sounded delicious.

After eying the menu, I decided on a "Classic," with various meats and some tomatoes and onions. I didn't get the large, which was 12 inches... I got a half-sub, which was six inches. Seemed reasonable.

But. Examine this graph with the sub-verted (get it?) math:

That's right. The sandwich seemed small, so after unwrapping it at my desk I grabbed a ruler and measured. The long edge of the diagonally-cut sandwich was right at six inches, but the short edge was just under four.

Six inch sub my ass.

The sandwich was delicious, but there wasn't enough of it and it had the special sauce of injustice. At least I didn't order the footlong.

Greek Myth or Just a Dead Deer?

I sort of have a love affair with Greek myths. I read a (simplified) version of the Iliad when I was a wee lad and, although I am still not sure I understand why dactylic pentameter is, I enjoy reading about the trials and tribulations of Greek heroes that can be so remarkable and yet still not measure up to Greek gods.

Earlier today I read this story, about a Wisconsin male deer that met with an untimely demise. From the story:

A love-struck buck ran out of luck a week ago. The seven-point buck was killed when it rammed a 640-pound concrete statue of an elk in the backyard of Mark and Carol Brye's home in rural Viroqua.

Archangel, who had sent me the link, agreed with me that it was sad. Because I have a love affair with Greek myths, I framed the death of the deer in similar terms.

The deer was a mortal, proud of its capabilities and motivated to challenge and dominate its peers. It saw something that was other and similar but... different. The concrete statue was the equivalent of a god--heavier and, in key ways, stronger than the deer. The deer butted and felt pain and butted again... and after a heroic effort, managed to topple its opponent.

But it had mortally wounded itself and it staggered away from its final victor before toppling over, dead.

The statue? A little damaged but it will be fixed and set back up, eternal on its own version of Mt Olympus.

Two Unrelated Things

A couple of funny (strange, with a hint of haha) things from my life the last couple of days:

Adam Lambert Once Removed

I arrived at work one morning this week and I was greeted by a coworker who told me to hold on and called another coworker out to tell me "the story".

This second coworker came out and told me the following story:

I have a friend named Thomas [name changed]. Thomas is from San Diego and he knows Adam Lambert and was at a party with him last night.

("Cool," I'm thinking, "Maybe he showed him a picture of my Halloween costume.")

So I was thinking, Thomas has hooked up with Adam, so if you hooked up with Thomas it would be like you hooked up with Adam.

I appreciate his creativity, and it's a small world, but I don't think I'm going to be making that a top priority.

Sad Songs Say So Much

For many years now, I have played guitar. I don't play it that well, but I can strum chords and whatever. A couple of years ago I wrote some music and challenged myself to write, record and edit a song within three hours. It was a good limitation because it challeneged me and it forced me to accept imperfections in what I produced (rather than having nothing finished because it didn't sound quite right).

I have almost twenty songs that I've written and enjoy listening to because they bring back memories--good and bad--and because I have some level of pride in them, for all their faults.

The other night I had my Windows Media Player just going through songs in order and my songs came up and I noticed that the songs that I wrote specifically for other people (and by "people" I mean, as I so often do, "women") rarely elicited a positive response from the inspiration. Like, maybe two out of five... which is lower than I would have expected if I had never written songs for a chick.

Women that I do not write the songs for seem to like them, but ... yeah. It's sort of depressingly predictable that I would wait until something took a bad turn and then a silly song wouldn't sway them.