Afternoon Farts

The Accident: Part Five

2011-11-17T18:59:00.000-08:00

I got a touch ahead of myself. We need to rewind back to the Friday prior to my return to work. I had an errand to run and did so with the help of my dad. Again, riding in a vehicle made me overwhelmingly nauseas. Much worse than my low-level urge to puke was word from my realtor that the bank was pulling a 180 and removed their offer to pay for half of the repair costs needed to make the house livable. It was like getting punched in the stomach. Suddenly the one thing that had me looking up and towards a positive future despite my current condition was becoming less and less certain. And again, to my parent’s credit, my dad offered up that the money would come from somewhere; the house would still be mine. This was immense but also made me feel a guilty, queasy, a whole gambit of emotions but none were happy or positive. The news was however met with a truly epic Oxy-aided stress-induced eating binge that night.

I’m going back to give this vital bit of info since the house buying was a pretty big side story to the main one. I’ve also failed to mention that when I did sign my offer on my house about an hour prior Theo and I finally discussed what would happen to our living triumvirate. Theo citing the valid “we’re a married couple that would like our own space” reason told me would not move to the house with me. Bummer, and sort of scary to sign an offer on a house knowing I’d need to find two roommates to make my mortgage. I was all about pushing past my fears through that whole process. It had thus been decided this house or no, at the end of May we’d be moving out of the house on 47th. Come the 4th of July I’d either be a homeowner or officially living with my parents.

Tuesday, May 10th, I woke up and started a new morning routine that involved my mother helping me to dress. Having a broken humerus makes it pretty difficult to put on an under and dress shirt as highly encouraged by the dress code for my workplace. In my impatience to get past this frustrating hurdle, and also because I have this really stupid independence streak, I’d often try to dress myself only to forget which sleeve had to be put on first (the left) and then suffer the indignity of having my mom correct my mistake and doing it all herself. Clearly my impatience saved me no time only I still tried nearly every morning.

From there I’d go about making my oats. Because my cast iron skillet and dutch oven were still at my house on 47th I made due with some cookware my parents had that I didn’t much care for. Cast iron is my much preferred cookware of choice. With this other stuff my oats weren’t as luscious, yes I said luscious, and my egg was just sort of ‘meh.’ The upside is with only one arm I’m pretty sure I couldn’t totally wield my cast iron stuff. Even the much lighter pan and pot gave me fits. It was just another layer of frustration that preparing my breakfast now took extra effort and many accidental drops of all manner of cooking and eating implements. I’m a klutz with two hands, trying reducing that to one and results were as expected.

I sort of apologize for again discussing my oats.

I only mention any of that because I’m a man that thrives on routine. If my routine gets disturbed I happen to get agitated and annoyed if it isn’t for a good reason. Among the most hallowed of routines is my morning/breakfast one which sets the tone for the whole day. This whole broken arm/accident/living at home thing was royally messing up my favorite routine. A constant state of agitation settled in, stuck around for quite some time, put its feet up on the table, and really made itself at home.

To get to work I’d be driving. The nausea had abated enough that this was no real problem. The main problem was adjusting to driving with only one hand. Not much of problem except for turning off the blinker after changing a lane on the freeway. Some of the sharper turns also had me frantically grabbing and re-grabbing the wheel to turn it enough to clear the turn. In all it was one of the more fun challenges I experienced.

While driving to work I passed many bike commuters and did so with a pang of sadness. I was nearing my time of year, the one where I “pedal and love it” rather than “pedal and deal with it.”

Another thought that occurred to me during this time - and I actually still think- was any time I saw an idiot on a bike doing something that put himself in a position to get hit was “yeah, that asshole goes uninjured, whereas I’m here with a broken body.” I’m not bitter, I swear.

A totally not fun challenge was trying to tuck in my shirt and latch a belt with one and a half hands. I loosened the straps that held my brace enough so my left hand could reach down to the fly region, but the way the bone was broken my arm from below the break had no support and flopped around. This wasn’t much help in tucking. Peeing w/ a fly (zipper or button) took me some figuring out as well. I happen to take a lot of pride in tucking in my shirt at work. Never mind my shirts are usually wrinkly, or that most are showing some extreme wear as they are like 6 years old. My pants aren’t much better. I’m not saying I look good at work, but as long as that shirt is tucked I feel good.

That first day at work was a drain. Not the work itself, though typing did take a lot of extra effort since the fingers on my left hand weren’t reaching as far as I was accustomed to. Plus just to get my left hand up to the desk and thus keyboard level I’d have to grab it with my right hand lift up high enough to clear the desk height and then drop my left hand back onto the keyboard.

The draining part was because I had this brace on my arm, and since I’m seen by basically the whole company word had traveled and a lot of people knew I had been in the hospital. For the two weeks I was in the brace people would ask me what happened. I got to the point, as always happens in these cases, where I had a prepared story that was short and easy to say. That mini-speech I gave something like 300 times between Tuesday and Friday of that week.

A few times I was shocked and amused how people were able to turn asking about my brace back onto themselves and began to tell me what had once happened to them. One time I was mid-spiel, the part where I was extolling the helmet-as-lifesaver, so like maybe sentence two of my canned story, and the person said ‘…the owner of Bike Gallery is the nicest man, he offered me his helmet, no really…’ I then had to walk away because this person kept talking about the Bike Gallery, how our company may start working with them, blah, blah, blah. It was a level of self-absorption I was totally unprepared for. This is coming for a dude that’s spent way too many hours typing this out. I know self-absorption since I am.

One thing I quickly just let slide was people asking me about my shoulder. I can understand the mistake since my brace did somewhat cover my shoulder. I have this very strong desire to correct people if they misspeak. It’s maybe my greatest liability and annoyance as a person. I just want people to speak correctly. I want people to say exactly what they mean, not something that’s close enough. My ARM was broken, the humerus to be exact, my shoulder, thankfully, was uninjured. I stopped correcting people entirely, still to this day when I’m asked about my shoulder and I just say “oh it’s doing a lot better, thanks for asking.”

My work days took on their normal routine, or rather, I soon fell into a routine since I like routines best. I was able to skirt some work such as installed keyboard trays, moving most anything, setting up conference rooms, changing out the water cooler bottle, basically anything that required two hands. I sat at my desk and fielded emails all day.

I did somewhat lamely attempt to use my injured status in some misguided attempt to, I really don’t know, woo some female co-workers? Red faced, as in typing this right now, we’ll move right along.

One of the things I enjoy in the morning once I’ve clocked is a nice cup of tea. Getting tea with a broken arm was a serious and very frustrating challenge. As stated my left hand wasn’t really solid. It flopped from here to there and everywhere. I had no fine control. Objects held in that hand moved as if independent and most of the time quite against my desires. What this meant was that as I attempted to bring back my mug of hot water to my desk from a lunchroom one floor down it was a fucking disaster near every day. My right hand was designated for opening doors and brandishing my access card in front of readers to open up the stairwell, lunchroom, and my office area doors. My left hand was armed with a mug of very hot water that would, without fail, spill all over; my hand, the floor, my pants, didn’t matter. The motion of opening one door with my right hand meant my left hand would rock and sway. Climbing a set of stairs lefty would do the same. Taking the elevator was out of the question. I scoff/roll my eyes/grouse at the lazy assholes that use an elevator to travel one floor. I’d be lucky to make it back to my desk with a mug ¾ full of hot water. My hand had some very minor burning. It got to the point I just stopped getting tea.

I also got the grand idea in my head that if I couldn’t run, bike, play soccer, I should at least climb stairs from my floor, the 9th, up to 24th. I’d make the ascent 2-3 times a day. Sometimes I’d take the stairs two a time and get a little lather going, other times I’d slowly and methodically take them one at a time. Either way I’d have to hug my left arm to my body with my right to keep it from moving too much. One day after doing a quick climb I came back and my insides felt funny. It was an odd feeling sort of like having gas and drinking too much water only neither of those was the case. I stopped that campaign of silliness after the bout of broken innards, well that, and climbing stairs sucks.

Once home I’d have my mom help me out of my shirts which meant taking off my brace. I eventually began to call him Bartimus the Brace, and with him removed I was treated to some of the most epic relief feeling scratch sessions I can remember. Out of the brace my arm felt way out of position and it was really uncomfortable. The moment I got the brace back on the arm felt back in its correct position. The brief interim w/o brace featured some of the best itching possible.

Showering was an onerous task since it required being out of the brace for a long time. Soaping and drying a broken arm was not fun. Hence it would follow my showering rate started to turn downward.

I’d look forward to the 8 o’clock hour where I’d take an Oxy to help ease myself to sleep. Oxy also, as previously stated, allowed me to eat a serious amount of junk food around the house. I think half the reason I looked forward to Oxy wasn’t just to get to sleep, but to drift and be free to be allowed -due to the Oxy- to eat foods I normally wouldn’t allow in my mouth.

Shirtless viewings of my torso during this time were not pleasant.

Night seemed to bring on a new problem that quickly grew into a sort of big issue for me. About four years ago in an effort to clear food (most likely a dastardly carrot bit) I used maybe the incorrect and for sure misappropriated piece of plastic and ‘lo a bit of my right rear molar broke off. For four years up until this point the rear molar would break away bit by bit, some weeks it cut the side of my tongue making it painful to speak, other times I forgot it was a an issue. I never went to the dentist for reasons I’m not going to outline here; I’ll just leave it at I’m a huge fucking idiot. So but, at some point during all of this crap I began to get tooth aches. To experience a real deal tooth ache was enough to outshine the broken ribs, almost.

What it is to suffer from a tooth ache is to be inspired to take whatever actions needed to make it end. A pain I’d never felt that almost consumed all others. They would strike without warning. The remedy that didn’t have a 100% success rate but was at least something would be to swish with lukewarm salt water and hope fervently the ache would pass. I’d often be hesitant to swish because if swishing didn’t work I’d suddenly have lost my one and only hope of relief. That lack of hope was much worse than the ache itself I found.

Broken body, Home purchase crumbling, and now a tooth so broken in my mouth it ached a dull horrid pain. This was certainly going on record as one of the more interesting springs I've endured.

Finally, after two weeks of work, the Baritmus the Brace, a crooked arm and all the shit that goes with it, I had a follow up with my arm guy and the x-ray was a real eye-opener.

Surgery was set to take the crook out of my very crooked arm. After two weeks of work I’d be missing more owing to the surgery and subsequent recovery.

The Accident: Part Four

2011-09-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

On Thursday morning my night nurse, a respectable and nice woman in her own right, told me the day nurse was awesome. This had me pretty excited since I had some pretty substandard nurses during my stay. My lack of patience means I’m hard on people and in general I was wholly disappointed by my nurses. I thought these people were to be the paradigms of caring and intelligence. I didn’t really get that from most of them.

I have this fleeting memory of acquiescing to a partial sponge bath which I asked only be partial since I didn’t want parts below my waste touched. I think I only agreed to it to help with the rankness of my pits. If this memory is true it had to have happened on Wednesday or Tuesday. Though I can’t recall every smelling myself, but then, isn’t that usually the case?

My night nurse spoke correctly Heather was awesome. Just an all around great person from the too short time we spoke. Thursday was also the day I was getting discharged and I was pretty anxious to get out by this point. My mother was on hand to take me home. The catch was that I had been foolishly honest and said I hadn’t pooped since sometime before getting hit. I say foolish because that was the one requirement for release from the hospital. I hadn’t really realized I wasn’t even doing my daily constitutional until asked and subsequently told that one of side-effects of Oxy was it really clogs a person up. With the terms of my release set I went about doing the most natural to be done. I told my mom to track down Heather and instructed her, my mom, to say I had done as demanded of me. She came back a short time later and said “I think I just lied to the nurse.” I’m still unsure why she used the words “I think,” she straight up lied and it was great.

A few moments later the ever-cool Heather arrived with a wheelchair and I was leaving my hospital room behind without even looking back. I climbed into the front seat of my mom’s car and requested we drive from Legacy Emanuel to the intersection in which I was hit at something like 4:30 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. I could sit here and gripe that my mom took a really dumb way (true) and the whole trip took way too long (also true), but in truth any trip up the windy roads needed to get to Skyline would have made me miserable. This was when I made another realization; moving in a car with a concussion is to have the most intense motion sickness I have ever experienced.

Also just as our journey began the All-State woman called me to get my statement. In retrospect I’m not sure if giving my statement while in the moving vehicle was the best move since what I recall most from that experience is having the hood up over my eyes and my eyes closed hard as I focused on describing what happened while also not vomiting.

Once that was done I laid back with my eyes shut and focused my best energies on not getting sick in my mother’s car. We passed the intersection only in that state it didn’t really resonate with me and it was a general waste of time. After that we proceeded to my house in NE to collect some items. It had been decided I’d be recovering at my parent’s house which just made a lot of sense. Once at my house the first thing I did was order an American Dream pizza, the one I should have enjoyed last Sunday before this whole mess happened. With that done I packed some clothes, food items, and my Gilmore Girls DVDs as my source of entertainment for the coming days. With the pizza picked up we headed to SW where again motion sickness descended upon me something fierce.

Sweet, sweet pizza which I inhaled and laid back in a recliner in my parent's basement to rest and watch some Futurama (I’d also brought those DVDs) only as would be the case for the next handful of days I just slept through many episodes, awaking to see bits and pieces, laugh, and fall back to sleep. A haze really is a pretty good description of what this was like.

Oxy made me chatty like I was drunk but I was unaware it would also have the same effect on my eating. You know how when drunk everything in front of you seems like a swell idea to consume? Or heck, how a trip through the drive thru at something like 3:00 a.m. is like a gift from the heavens provided by your annoyed sober driver? Yup, same deal when on Oxy. At this point I was tapering off on them, but still taking maybe 2 every 5 hours. I’d get an impulse and searching my parent’s house I went. The rub here is that there’s no shortage of sweets to be had.

Mild bit of digression, this is the point in the blog where a lot of my food neurosis will be evident and I’m a touch nervous to even express all of this.

I’d been thinking a lot and come to realization that my activity level prior to getting hit was now at a standstill for the foreseeable future. The smart thing would have been to accept that and watch my food intake. The route I took was to open what I term the flood gates (as in when I decide to eat a lot I consciously think “I’m about to open the flood gates”) and just consume as much as I wanted when I wanted. It sort of played into the idea my mind kicks around from time to time about what it would be like to gain a lot of weight and if I’d be able to lose it all.

How did this actually manifest itself? For one my father keeps on hand a lot of Little Debbie products which I happen to have severe weak spot for. Swiss Cake Rolls, Oatmeal Cream Pies, Blueberry Rolls, Magic Brownies, any of this shit looked awesome to me. And the amount I’d consume in one sitting was pretty staggering. Two Swiss Cake Rolls, and like an Oatmeal Cream Pie plus maybe like two packages of those cheddar and peanut butter crackers that are in vending machines but no one is ever actually tempted to buy. This was after a huge dinner, and sometimes I’d wander out to the garage where the goods were stored a couple of times a night.

The nice thing about the Oxy is that it removed any and all guilt, whereas when I normally eat a lot of shit, and don’t get me wrong Little Debbie stuff is pretty shitty in terms of quality compared to Hostess -I shudder to think how much Hostess stuff I would have consumed if given the chance- I’d be filled with a sense of self-loathing, at the time I just ate and ate without a second thought.

Other huge eating hits during this time included when my mom would bake up a batch of Otis Spunkmeyer cookies maybe once a week. Cooked these guys were pretty good, but I didn’t want to appear as a pig so I’d eat like 5 cookies and then eat like 7 more on the sly that were frozen in the freezer. The frozen ones were real good. And there is a moment I do like when I eat so many sweets I feel sick. Can’t explain it more than that. My dad has gotten in the habit of always having on hand cinnamon swirl bread which is so fantastic when toasted and then slathered with margarine and jam. My dad also works at Clackamas Bakery which supplies Fred Meyers, QFCs, et all, with baked goods. From time to time he brings home crap that can’t be sent to the stores. In the freezer there are, still, like four packages of muffins and a ton of round sheet cakes. All this stuff was fair game.

Oddly the one meal I never totally veered from was breakfast which I found this odd point of pride that I was still eating a good breakfast when the rest of the day would be filled with poor eating choices. I take great pride in my oats, but a detailed breakdown of the breakfast I’ve eaten 6-7 days a weeks for the past two years and counting doesn’t seem like it’s warranted. If however you get me drunk around a campfire I will yammer on about my oats rest assured. I would however talk myself into allowing a muffin warmed and then, like the cinnamon swirl bread described moments ago, slathered in margarine and jam, and consumed in like 4 bites. Maybe when I say I never totally veered from my breakfast I'm mistaken.

Eating all of this was odd almost like I was watching myself do it from the third person. I was stringent on my diet prior to getting hit. Think I’m kidding? I measure out the amount of food I eat when applicable. I eat the same thing every day at the same time. I have, to put it mildly some hang-ups about food and its role in my life. Allowing myself this freedom was contingent on the pain pills. More than once I thought, “after I down this Oxy at 8:00 it –the Oxy- will allow me to eat whatever I want.” That’s not a normal thought I’m pretty sure.

Before I could get to breakfast however I’d have to survive the night. Out of the hospital sleeping became an even greater challenge and it would be something like three months before I could sleep a whole night and feel rested.

In those early days I had one sleeping position as an option which was on my back with pillows propping up my broken arm. I slept without my brace which meant any jostling was really uncomfortable. I’d lay awake with either my ribs aching*, or my arm sending my little reminders it was broken. In the morning a parent would come in and help me get my brace on. This was always dicey since my parents were worried about hurting me. All I wanted was the brace on so my arm would at least feel like it was in the right position. I can’t imagine what it was like for them to move that arm when it clearly was so very broken and worrying about my pain levels. They also had to contend with a super cranky kid who is cranky enough first thing the morning before coffee or food never mind the lack of sleep or my his they do whatever so long as it’s quick and his arm is in his brace. I was more than just a little bit of brat during this time. They were and have been universally great through all of this. I also had a sweet amount of scabs on my upper arm and shoulder so cleaning of my wounds took place in the mornings. In all, the hours between 11 p.m. and 9 a.m. were pretty much unfun. I’m also unable to go through the night without rising to take a leak and have been most my life. I’d wake up and weigh the choice between getting out of bed, or to lie in bed awake not able to sleep. Sort of silly since I always forced myself up grimacing and grunting due to rib pain the whole time.

My days, much like the ones in the hospital, settled into a routine. I’d wake up make breakfast, and head downstairs where the Gilmore Girls kept my company during the day as I texted, gchated, emailed as many people as possible, or slept. I’d cobble together a lunch, most likely a microwave meal, dinner was maybe the same, and then I gorged on fatty sweets. Lather, rinse, repeat.

What I’m really struggling to remember is if I attended my Wolv(erine)s soccer game that Saturday. I’m pretty sure I did, whether I drove or my dad did is unclear. What I do remember most was how many times I nearly cried twofold, one at seeing my friends play a game I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to play again. This was truly crushing to see, and two, all my friends again expressing concern for me. While I thought it would be a fun diversion, it was really one of the more sad things I did.

The following Monday I had a follow-up with my arm guy (that’s easier than spelling Orthopedic) who breezed in and met for maybe like 5 minutes. My dad and I didn’t ask a lot of questions much to my mom's chagrin. At this point I wanted to give it a go to have my body heal itself without surgery. His assistant Lori – a woman I had an instant crush on- walked on by and asked if I needed more pain meds. I told her I’d already been tapering off my use to just one in the evenings (mostly true), and maybe one more right before bed. Still, I was shocked at how easy it would have been to score more Oxy. My dad did ask if I could return to work and I that was allowed so the following Tuesday a whole 8 days after getting hit I made my return to work.

*Totally doesn’t fit into the narrative at all hence were down here. Tony Romo suffered a fractured rib and a punctured lung during the Cowboys/Niners game. He went back out there and led his team to victory and took hard shots while staying in the pocket long enough to deliver completions to his receivers. He did it without a competent running back which meant he had to throw a lot more than if he had a decent run threat. My point is I think I’m sort of tough, but no, not when I realize I had the same injuries and I couldn’t even get out of bed easily. I’m a pansy. No really, the amount of dwelled on this the past week has been a little sad.

The Accident: Part Three

2011-09-11T08:17:00.001-07:00

After the night, which went better thanks to the lack of a beeping machine, I was awoken to a nurse telling me she’d have to check, but she was pretty sure I could eat solid food again. This was AWESOME. She came back a bit later with a little menu and told me how to order room service. I wasted no time. I looked over the menu and settled on the breakfast burrito, oatmeal, and fruit bowl. Now here’s the funny part about hospital room service. Every time I called in my order the woman would say “your food will arrive within 45 minutes.” My hunger was returning and 45 minutes seemed like an eternity in this situation, but everything single time food showed up EXACTLY 45 minutes later after I called. Never once was it even a minute early.
My next few days settled into a routine of visits from doctors, nurses, specialists and my parents.

I had one doctor I saw every morning who would come and check on me. I was on his rounds. I liked him, he brought in a team of people, breezed in asked me maybe four questions, prodded at my various injured parts, and departed.

There were two other medical professionals I saw regularly. Both were interested in my brain health and not much else. One beckoned me out of bed and walked me around the hallways outside my room. This in and of itself wasn’t the easiest of tasks but then this sadist would ask me to move my head back and forth, and then up and down. I also had to tackle going up and down a half flight of stairs. Why? No clue; if it was an attempt to make me vomit she nearly succeeded the first day I met with her because as I got back into my bed after our quick walkabout she asked me how I felt and I conceded I thought I was going to be sick. A nurse appeared with a syringe and injected my newly clean IV line with a drug *poof* need to vomit gone. Sort of amazing stuff. But also, after that first walk it dawned on me just how fucked up I was and I began to realize this was all real and healing was going to take time.

I was never given a hospital gown or anything. Anytime I was up and about I was just in my soccer shorts and the brace for my arm. When I was walking around the corridors, yeah, I did it shirtless. No big deal, but it still strikes me as odd since I was in a hospital and all. Luckily good old Oxy was there to help stymie any bashfulness.

The other woman that met with me was young and cute. I did not want to let her down. I have this absolute need to impress any medical professional with my behavior and demeanor; like I want to be, above all others, the perfect patient. I think this probably stems from my desire to have anyone that meets me to like me. I don’t care if I’m not liked for whatever reason, but I do really want people to like me. This is an odd contradiction of sorts which only seems to add to my over-thinking every single situation in my life. I figure the way to do that with doctors and nurses is to be deferential, and to act like I’m not in any pain or discomfort.

She was very nice and a touch patronizing. She gave me a pair of socks and asked me to put them on and prefaced my attempts with “you’ll have to do this on your own you know.” When I succeeded with relative ease despite only having one hand and some achy ribs she seemed amazed. But the amazement was more like the one shown to a preschool aged kid that learned to tie his shoes all on his own.

As I had figured out how to best get out of bed I would do so regularly to enjoy sitting upright in the pretty comfy chair in my room. I liked this chair because it was out of view from the door and people would walk in and not see me until I made myself known. From this spot I would compose texts, emails, Facebook updates, find people to chat with on Google Chat. I had this yearning urge to communicate with the outside world. I attribute this odd behavior, to me anyway, to the Oxy.

Coffee was brought to me via Andrew which was a true bit of awesomeness. One of my cousins arrived and brought a back scratcher via my uncle which was touching since just a few weeks prior I had been raving about the idea of a back scratcher he always has at his house. Most amazingly a woman I work with visited with treats from New Seasons. I say amazingly because this woman is one I thought very little of if I’m to be totally honest. She’s a very nice person, but my lack patience with her limited intelligence is something that makes me cringe to see when I type this out, however, it is the truth. I truly did not anticipate her showing up for a visit, or with treats. This was, above all others, the most humbling visit I received. She’s also a cancer survivor though you wouldn’t know it. In short, I’m a true asshole. Now anytime I find myself getting annoyed with her at work I think about the visit, I think about how she’s survived a cancer than I and I feel the annoyance vanishing. I just wish I was the type of person that didn’t need to think about that stuff in order to accept people as they are.

My afternoons consisted of alternating between the bed and the chair, ordering room service (surprisingly awesome sandwich on foccaia was the winner for best hospital food item), watching either Food Network, ESPN, or TNT for the playoffs, drifting in and out of sleep, and frantically trying to find someone to engage in conversation as outlined above, never mind that using my phone meant, as already discussed, dropping it on my face which would wake me up to finish maybe another sentence.

I’ll admit a part of me always wanted a brief stay in a hospital. I did like the idea of food brought to me, the adjustable bed, probably the idea I’d be on pain killers, all the attention. It seemed like a fun thing in one sense. I’ll also admit this stay in the hospital was fitting the bill of the idealized stay I had envisioned. I had most of my capacities. Most everything was manageable. Getting in and out of bed was still sort of rough, and my concussion meant that I had to keep my head pretty still and focused on only one thing, but after that? It was all pretty gravy. Plus, I was banged up enough that it’s not like I could do much else other than sit around in a room passing the time as I was passing it.

I was on the phone a fair amount with a few different people. One was my insurance agent as he was trying to gauge what happened to me and was expressing concern. The other was the insurance agent representing the woman that hit me. She was kind of a pain to deal with. Let’s just say the concern she conveyed over the phone did not seem totally sincere. The third were my realtors as my home buying was still moving forward pending a few issues.

I had done my home inspection a few weeks before and it was discovered among many minor issues the big one was that the basement had a very high level of radon detected. That was a red flag and so a repair addendum to the bank was sent asking them to cover the costs of the radon mitigation, a test proving the radon levels were no longer at a cancer-causing level, and a few plumbing and electrical issues also be repaired. Amazingly the bank agreed to cover all the repairs so long as I agreed to add half the cost to the purchase price, or something like $2,500. For that much I was getting $5,000 worth of repairs for a home I really wanted, it was like the best Groupon deal ever. Plus, it isn’t like $2,500 added on to a 30 year mortgage was enough to scare me away so I agreed to their terms.

My mother and father maintained their daily visits. Mother would sit with me for awhile asking me how I was doing, and informing me on the progress with the insurance end of things. I was 100% sure I was in no way at fault for what happened to me. My mother agreed, however she was weary of the other insurance company.

On Wednesday morning the doctor I saw every morning asked me, “if you had one wish what would you wish for?” Obviously still not thinking normally I pondered the question trying to figure out what he was driving at. I saw they were getting impatient waiting on my answer so I went with, “that I never got hit by that truck?” The doctor realized I was a little slow on the uptake and stopped trying to be cutesy and just came out and said “I’m asking if you want out of the hospital today.” I did not. I was unsure how’d I’d deal with anything outside of my new home and wasn’t ready to depart just yet. Plus, I hadn’t tasted the whole food menu.

The second time I met with the lady intent on making me vomit by having me walk and move my head the need to vomit was not as pronounced and there need for the anti-vomit wonderdrug to be administered. I took that as a sign of progress.

I also met with the cute patronizing woman another time. This time rather than clapping and squealing at my ability to put on socks she administered a cognitive test to see where my brain was. This proved to be one of the funniest and most disheartening things during the whole of stay. There were many parts to the test phase one involved me trying to make change. I can’t even do that non-concussed so I didn’t mind that I failed that portion. There was another portion of the test that was simple math. I do believe I leaned heavily on my fingers for solving. The final portion involved her reading off a list of six words and then all I had to do was repeat them back in order. Not only that, but we were to do this exercise a total of four times and each time the words would appear in the same order. I thought by round four I’d nail this sucker, instead here’s what it looked like:

Her:
“Monkey”
“Supermarket”
“Alarm”
“Vehicle”
“Computer”
“Trumpet”

Me:
“Hmm, bad start”
“Supermarket, I know that was second”
“Crap, whoops sorry”
“Uhh”
“Nope can’t remember”
“Trumpet!”

Her:
“Monkey”
“Supermarket”
“Alarm”
“Vehicle”
“Computer”
“Trumpet”

Me:
“Monkey!”
Sup…shoot
*Shakes head*
“Alarm?”
*Shakes head*
“Trumpet!”

Her:
“Monkey”
“Supermarket”
“Alarm”
“Vehicle”
“Computer”
“Trumpet”

Me:
“Monkey!”
“Supermarket!”
“No idea”
“Gone”
“I’m sorry”
“Trumpet!”

The way she looked at me with sympathetic eyes and then offered that I didn’t do that bad, and to do that test while also on pain meds is not easy, something I agreed with but in my mind I knew I failed because of the concussion and nothing else, this only added to my despair about my brain functionality. I felt like I let her down, and it further impressed on my how messed up my poor brain was thanks to the concussion.

The Accident: Part Two

2011-08-30T20:05:00.001-07:00

The story continues. Part one right here.

It’s not like Wally was some epic night nurse or anything, it’s just I talked to him way more than just about any of the other night nurses I had. He had this cool edge to him like he was giving me the hook-up with morphine on the sly. In my mind he was like the cool orderly in Jesus’ Son, or corrupt though not evil like the ones in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

As he introduced himself to me and we chatted for a bit he had to stand aside as a team of other medical professionals came into my room to x-ray my chest or my arm, I don’t know which. They asked me to lean forward to put a x-ray backing board behind me, leaning forward with freshly broken ribs was like asking me to punch myself in the balls.

After they left Wally asked the golden question “would you like something for the pain, like morphine?” Granted, I’d never actually had morphine prior to this moment, but I liked the idea of morphine. In full disclosure, I’ve yet to meet a prescription med I haven’t liked. I don’t go questing after them, but when prescribed or when they fall into my lap I’m always a-okay with them. [Parents, this is not something to worry about one bit, trust me on this]

Before injecting it into the IV in my right arm, the same one started in the ambulance which it should be mentioned was also very blood beneath the adhesive tape holding it in place, he issued a warning. “This may make you feel like you’ll need to vomit, but it should pass.” From this whole experience one of the things I’ve learned is that when a medical professional issues a warning such as that I should just assume that it will happen exactly as warned. I used to think that any warning like that one would not apply to me since only weaklings would feel any negative effects or need to maybe vomit after an injection of something like morphine. Turns out I’m a weakling as well and I now know that after this experience. In went the morphine and almost immediately I had to vomit then, sure enough, that need passed and into the clouds I ascended to float.

The morphine was administered I believe three more times and each time I bravely fought off the need to vomit. It was during this time Wally and I chatted. What we chatted about not entirely sure, but I recall having a great time just shooting the shit with my new friend Wally. At one point he did reference my Slough Feg sticker I use a bookmark that was peaking out of my copy of the unabridged Count of
Monte Cristo causing me much excitement until it was clear he was confused about another band or something, not sure. I was very disappointed in Wally.

During the first night I did not really sleep. This was because at some point in the evening, I believe due to the morphine, I began to breathe slowly and without much depth. Breathing slowing and shallowly with a damaged lung of some sort is, I guess, not good. I was hooked up to a respirator that monitored the depths of my breaths. If I was not breathing deep enough it would beep really darn loudly. The rub here is that breathing deep with broken ribs hurt like a real mo to the fo. My night was like this. Drift off to sleep, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, “huh, oh, shit I’m not getting enough air, breath deep Mark,” big inhalation, horrible rib pain that shot me back awake, beeping sound ceases, drift off to sleep. The night was passed in semi-conscious haze of beeps, rib pain, Wally, drugs, Food Network, and so on.

In the morning I was switched to my new drug, one which became my good friend for the next couple of months, Oxycodone. Henceforth referred to as Oxy. They didn’t mess around with the Oxy by the way; I was getting three pills every three hours during my entire hospital stay. Also upon the break of dawn I was informed I wasn’t allowed solid foods. Huh? Well in that case sure I’ll have some water, broth, and Jell-O. Actually the broth was pretty awesome from what I remember as was the Jell-O. I’m assuming they use real Jell-O and not some off-brand crap. Oddly, despite not having eaten since noon the previous day I was not hungry, or the broth and Jell-O had magical filling properties.

I got busy on my phone texting people. Here’s the thing however, Oxy sort of makes me drift off to sleep at the drop of a hat. Many times I’d be in the midst of composing a text only to drop the phone on my face which would wake me up and allow me to continue my text.

My dad arrived before shooting off to his work. When he was visiting me another doctor came in to relay to me the status on my brain. It was believed that along with my concussion I also had some bleeding on the brain. No idea what that would mean for me. He came in and I swear to you spoke monosyllabic gibberish at a rate that no one would have understood. It didn’t help I was concussed and high on Oxy, but I still have no idea what he said other than they believed I was not bleeding in the brain which was good. My dad confirmed that and also added he couldn’t understand a word the good doctor had said either.

After my dad Jacob and his mom visited. From this I remember I was asleep and awoke to them standing over my bed which gave quite the startle. I was pleased to see them and more reading materials were dropped off for my pleasure. Reading at this juncture was a lofty dream and nothing more. I believe I rudely fell asleep on them a number of times so they departed.

Katt, Ash, and Bella were the next to arrive. They were kind enough to bring a portable DVD player with Never Back Down. Not be delved into here, but Never Back Down is a movie I can never see too many times. I was still, at this time, naked under one thin sheet. While I remember not much of what was said to the three of them I was told much after the fact I referenced my penis a fair amount. Not the most
ideal conversation to have in the presence of a five year-old, this was wholly regrettable. They soon departed to save Bella’s ears and innocence.

Some time passed, my nurse was coming in once every three hours to give me more Oxy, my IV was removed and my arm cleaned of all the blood that brute of an EMT had caused during his rather poor poking, and my mom showed up. I asked her to hand me some shorts and finally after something like 28 hours naked I was semi-clothed. Most know I don’t really like being naked; I’m borderline a never-nude in fact.

I believe, though I’m most certainly wrong, that it was at the time I finally got out of my bed, the main reason was to use the restroom. Getting out of bed with my ribs took some interesting movements that meant I basically had to roll my left side, but not too far since that arm was broken and all, and then slide my feet to the floor and use my feet to stand up. It didn’t matter what machinations I used to get out of bed it hurt and took a certain amount of mental preparation to be willing to subject myself to the pain of getting out of bed. Not to mention getting back into bed was no picnic. I would sit on the bed, rotate and extend my legs out towards the foot of the bed. Then a very slow leaning back would take place as
the pain in my chest increased, but slowly leaning back was never an option so at some point I’d just drop my torso back onto the bed. It hurt, no other way to put it. Even simple tasks took on a new layer of complexity and pain. This is always the biggest negative to being sick or injured in my mind.

My mom also started to tell me all the developments regarding the insurance, but even on a good day without a concussion I can’t understand that shit, so I just nodded and told her she was confusing me.

A party started up in my room. Along with my mother others including, Justin, Jo, Andrew, Sandy, Jude, Alison, Paul, Mel, all piled into my somewhat tiny room. Now I feel like a jerk because I’m sure maybe others all were there only I’m unable to remember if that’s the case or not. I spent the time cracking jokes about my accident and then nodding off in front of everyone. I was still shirtless at this time, but thanks to the Oxy I was unabashed about such a thing. I’ve been told all this after the fact.

After everyone left I thought on all that had transpired, mainly, how many of my friends had come out to visit it me. I was touched because I honestly didn’t really think anyone -parent’s excepting- cared enough about to visit me in a hospital. Sounds sort of odd, but it’s true. I spend so much time in my own head I often assume others don’t care about me as much as I care about myself. That’s still probably true as I am an egomaniac, but just having everyone there meant far more to me than I would have expected and I’m still humbled when I think back on it. Aside from not suffering any injuries more major than the ones I had suffered due to the collision, I’m so very lucky to have made such good friends in my life and to know that I am cared for by a many number of people.

With that thought on my mind, and, I believe the Heats/Celtics playoff game on the tube followed by an attempt to watch Never Back Down, I drifted off to sleep after my first full day in the hospital.

The Accident: Part One

2011-08-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

Spurred on by a comment from Jacob I’m going to ramp up my blogging again. I know this hot/cold on/off relationship we have together is not great for either of us.

A very lengthy blog, split over many not as lengthy but still pretty lengthy blogs, about the story that has dominated my life since this summer I think is long overdue. I’m talking about getting hit by a truck and the resulting injuries/hospital stay/surgery/recovery.

I cannot however just start on May 1st on Skyline about one mile past Germantown Rd where I got hit. This story needs background information. A full fleshing out so bear with me. In April I took it upon myself to attempt to run for 30 days in a row. To achieve this goal I finally settled on running about 3 miles on my lunch break around the esplanade. I fell short at day 22 because of a tweaked calf muscle. Still the seeds for a runner had been planted. Running on my lunch breaks, commuting to work on my bike, a regime of push-ups and planks, and adhering strictly to my lame diet which meant no beer or alcohol period, meant that I was in extraordinary shape for me. My resting heart rate was in the low 40’s. I had worked so hard to get to this point –starting well before April more like since November after the road trip- and I felt great about myself. In April I was also working on purchasing a home on NE 72nd Ave. In all, I do believe, that this was the happiest I’d been in some time and whatever darkish cloud that seemed to hang over me was dissipating. I was playing soccer at a very high level, I could go on but you probably get the point. Oh, and I was down to 136 pounds. Not sure anyone should be that light, but I loved being that size. Sure, no woman wants a dude that scrawny, but I was happy with me and I really considered that to be the most important metric. So but anyway, it was also at the end of April I finally took my bike into the shop for a tune-up since I could not change gears as I rode and had in essence a single speed bike for well over 4 months.

April the 30th was the evening of a party to celebrate Paul’s birthday. Most all of my friends and acquaintances were in attendance. This is only notable because I spoke at length to everyone there about what I viewed as my impending home purchase. Not to belabor a point, but also I played two games of soccer that afternoon, I believe won both, and scored a total of three goals. Yup, I was at my acme and feeling stellar.

On May 1st I woke up sore. My legs felt battered and I was leaning towards a rest day. Les encouraged the notion of a rest day. As most remember this year’s weather has been cooler and May 1st was one of the first really nice days. I planned to walk to Everyday Music to enjoy the weather but also rest my legs. I walked half a block and turned back home. This day was too nice, my bike was newly tuned up, and I had new cleats. It was time for a ride. Something nice, short, and easy. The route would be a favorite featuring Ainsworth – Willamette – The St. John Bridge – Germantown – Skyline – Sylvan on ramp – Humphrey/Hewett – Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy – Barbur – Hawthorne Bridge – Ankeny – Home. It’s not much really, but it would also be the first time I climbed anything remotely long or steepish since last summer. All was well at the outset; even climbing up Germantown Rd was going fine. Sure that little punk was kicking my ass, but not as bad as I thought it was going to. I remember Kylesa was on the Mp3 player and I was really struck by how fitting the song Don’t Look Back was for that climb. It’s a song about burning the past. A notion I believe strongly in.

I got to the top, took a little break by this shut down restaurant and then swung on to Skyline and climbed up this wee hill. There’s some rolling hills and then there’s the pretty nice little downhill section. I rested my poor legs and coasted coming up to the T-Intersection of Springville Rd and Skyline.

Here’s what I remember. I saw a silver Ford F150 taking a left in front of me. Yelling “no, no, no!” to denote that the driver shouldn’t be turning at that moment since I was proceeding towards the intersection they were now blocking with their truck. A moment later I was thinking and yelling very loudly “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” I knew I was going to slam into this truck. I accepted this and decided to attempt to hit the largest part of the truck with the largest part of my body. The notion was, I think, to protect my bike. And with my left shoulder leading the way I hit the truck. I don’t totally remember the impact.

I’m lying on the side of the road. I’m looking up at blue skies and have no notion of any activity around me.

I hear a siren and ask, “what’s that siren?”
I’m told, “that siren is for you.”
I say or think, I’m not sure which, “awesome.”

Now I’m in the back of an ambulance trucking down Cornell, I think. Two EMTs are standing over me. One is an old veteran; his moustache is proof of experience, the other one is young. At some point I ask if my mother has been called, can someone please call my mom? I almost start to cry, shit maybe I do. The two EMTs are in a debate about who will stick my arm with an IV. The young is saying the ambulance is rocking too much for him to stick me. The old says he’ll do it. It is one painful sticking. I again ask about my mom.

I’m in what I’m assuming is an ER. The covers over the fluorescent lights are decorated too look like the clouds and sun. I’m not tricked. I’m loaded into a CT scanner.

I ask, in all seriousness, “hey wait, is this a CT machine? Aren’t I only supposed to have like 7 of these in one lifetime?”
“Well, yes, but how many have you had?”
“None”
“Then you’re fine”

I’m wheeled to another room. I’m flat on my back and my mom walks in. At this point I’m more or less “there” and I’ve stopped drifting in and out of consciousness. This, in retrospect, was pretty gosh darn scary. I’ve been blackout drizunk a few times, but this was a head trauma causing this gap in consciousness. This was something I'd only realize well over a week after the events just described. My mom somehow has my phone and backpack. Oh, and I’m also naked under a thin sheet. Since no medical personal has come in yet I wasn’t actually aware of how injured I was. I wasn’t even aware of the concussion until I was told sometime later, but knowing that makes all the random texts and emails I sent out in this waiting room of sorts all the more comical to me since when I go back and look at my sent folder I not only see messages I can’t remember sending, I also notice most of them have glaring typos.

With the emails and texts sent out, including one important text to Theo relaying my accident and a request that he order me an American Dream pizza. I call Tim, my boss, and tell him I may not be into work tomorrow.

In this waiting room, the one that has me flat on my back, Paul and Mel arrive to check in on me. Not sure what texts were sent to garner this action, but I’m most happy to see them even if I can barely remember their presence. Part of me felt bad intruding on their Sunday, then again, maybe only I value Sunday alone time as much as I do.

They depart and the ever dutiful Theo arrives with my pizza, oh my pizza I want so badly yet can’t eat since I’m flat on my back. Oh, and also I’m not sure what my status is on eating or what the heck is going on at the moment. I do remember asking him to go get me some pillows so I can prop my head up. Pillows arrive via Theo and my head is propped and as if by magic my blood pressure and heart drop. I also begin to sweat as though I’d been out running in 100 degree heat. This sort of sucked since around my eyes still had a lot of salt from the previous bit of riding causing the my eyes to burn and sting in a most painful way.

A nurse arrives and at some point. I’m accused of lying which I’m still not sure why other than I downplayed some discomfort I was in. Eventually I’m wheeled to a room, my room, and someone comes in to disclose my injuries. They are, a broken left humerus, one or two broken ribs, a punctured lung, possible bleeding on the brain, a concussion, and a lacerated spleen. My mother leaves to get some rest, I’m unsure of the time, and my night nurse Wally enters my life.

2011-04-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

2011-04-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

This is easily the best time of year for me from a sports viewing standpoint. The Blazers are in the post-season against a team I happen to like to watch a lot. I think they can win the series in 6. I'm not booking it by any means, but yes, I think they take the series on the home floor with me in attendance. I can already envision my tears of joy if this event comes to pass.

A short update on the challenges which, to recap, were 1.) no Facebook in any circumstance 2.) blog for 30 straight days 3.) run everyday for 30 days.

1 and 2 are fine and simple, though I'd admit some of the blogging is pretty banal and nugatory.

3 is going surprisingly well. I've been running between 1.6 miles and 3 miles every day for 14 days in a row now the amazing bit is foot pain that I feared would keep me from completing this goal is missing owing to a change in running form. I will admit that yesterday's run I would term as "uncomfortable" due to some gas issues of which still haunt me today.

2011-04-15T07:32:00.000-07:00

I've been working on two longer posts the past two weeks at work when I have time. They are different from the ones below which I basically bang out in 10 minutes, read twice, and then post. Both are turning out to be tricky to write, but should prove really entertaining, and illuminating if I can get them done for next week. Yes, I'm counting this post as a part of the 30 day challenge which is pretty lame since it only is promoting as-yet-completed blogs of for future posting.

Okay, I throw you a bone. Not only will the Foo Fighters have released the best album of 2011 with Wasting Light, the Foo have clearly established themselves as the best rock band currently going. No contest here, I'm sort of shocked as well.

2011-04-14T18:56:00.000-07:00

In the 8th floor men’s restroom above the right urinal a man has been, going on 6 years, been flicking his boogers on to the walls and ceiling. One need only look up in a relaxed urinatory state to gaze upon his handiwork.

In the 9th floor men’s restroom, again, the right hand urinal is subjected to a daily tableau or urine and blood of which draws my mordant curiosity.

In days past in the 10th floor men’s restroom, stall unknown, reportedly between the 10 and 11 o’clock hours a man was pleasuring himself to the general disgust of all.

Or to put it another way, restrooms around here are pretty fascinating places of depravity.

2011-04-13T18:54:00.000-07:00

Woke up the other day to a story on the radio that centered on a US Postal Service delivery man who had, I’m assuming, in a moment of pure panic went between, what I’m hoping he thought to be unoccupied homes, and proceeded to cop a squat and defecated – If I’m to use the most polite term- out in the open. Sadly, unbeknownst to him one of the houses was not unoccupied and a man was so disturbed by what he saw took “about 10” pictures and was attributed, during the news story, with the following quote, “this is how they show respect of property?” The postal worker is suspended w/o pay pending an investigation.

Okay back up, I don’t think this story is as depraved as it was made out to be. First consider the level of despair running through this poor man’s mind as he realized his choices were to either 1.) crap his pants, 2.) poop between two houses. That’s the very definition of a rock and hard place type of choice I think we can all agree. If he were to have crapped his pants does he then finish out his shift after trying to remove his ruined underpants, what if the poop breached the underpants barrier and got on his uniform? It’s a messy situation to say the least. Sure, pooping between two houses isn’t perfect, but maybe better that than out in the open on the sidewalk. He simply did the best he could in an impossible situation I believe.

Second, let’s consider that “about 10” pictures were taken. That’s just piling on the humiliation wouldn’t you say? Where’s the pity? I can understand being maybe a little put off by such behavior, but after all, this isn’t some filthy vagrant this is a postal delivery man; a pillar of society. And then to say something like “this is how they show respect of property?” Okay, sure, this man certainly shouldn’t have had to deal with another man’s shit on his property, but really, it was intentional? No, of course not, it’s just silly to be angry like this was an act out panic and need, not some prank or out of malice.

I say all this because of two things. 1.) while I don’t think we need to just poop and pee everywhere I’ve always found it a little unfair that we’re the only animals in the world that should only do our business indoors into some porcelain artifice. 2.) I have severe sympathy for the man as someone that’s both crapped his pants, and had to poop outdoors rather than crap his pants. Maybe I’m in a unique position to sympathize but I do all the same.

What I’d like to see is out of this investigation the man obviously not lose his job, but rather, an initiative where the USPS attempts to communicate with the nation at large to allow, in dire situations, all of us to open our doors and our bathrooms to the postal delivery men and women of America. I what this man to be jumping off for betterment of society.

2011-04-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

I’m a few days behind but by the very magic of postdating it will appear as though I’ve blogged every day of this 30 day challenge. And I’ve rationalized that if I’ve written 30 different distinct posts then it’s pretty much the exact same as had I done them all on different days rather than like four in one day as I catch up.

I had a coffee date on Saturday. The date itself is sort of irrelevant, but in the briefest of sketches our conversation centered on metal and basketball of which both topics are pretty much my primary interests. In this regard I should have been more than pleased with the outing. Upon reflection I didn’t even have a bad time at all. The conversation was a little herky jerky, but, come on, that’s more likely my fault and my general conversational cadence and oddness than it was hers. I’ll admit she wasn’t all that attractive to me, but in many respects this was sort of immaterial because I’ve been the type of dude that the more I get to know a person the more attractive they become if I’m inclined to be attracted in the first place. But anyway, an hour and a half later we parted ways as I asked if she’d be willing to do something again. This, a standard date move. I think at the time I was even genuine in my request. Then, as is so often the case these days, I was not compelled to contact her again for a second date. I went the whole weekend not thinking on what our next outing would be because I knew that wasn’t going to be the case.

I don’t even want to really delve into why this, the general lack of interest where there should be, was the case because I’m not sure it’s germane, at least isn’t the point of this post which will reveal itself shortly, like right now. No, the thing that interests me about myself (so maybe not at all to anyone else) is that I’m far more interested in her response to my blow-off e-mail which I sent last night. I’ve sent a number of these in the past. I’m by no means a jerk in them, quite the opposite in fact. I simply explain that the more-than-friend vibe I was hoping to find was missing, thank them for their time, and then wish them the best. And what interests me so much about this whole process is how they respond. I expect three types of responses. 1.) stony silence, totally apt, no harm there. 2.) anger, and a general calling out of my puerile nature, perhaps some general ill-will directed towards my future dating efforts, life, looks, personality &c. Also, totally apt and called for. 3.) returned will wishing, understanding, and general peacefulness. The thing is I’ve yet to have anything other than responses of the third type. For example, take the most recent one’s response, which, I kid you not, came in while I was composing this and reads,

“i agree with your feelings, although i appreciate you saying something. i’m sure i’ll run into you at a show or out celebrating the bulls championship sometime. good luck to as well.”

Which at this point only serves to propagate the cycle because, and here’s the part that I think indicates I’m broken, I’m pretty sure I’m more interested in one or two dates and then wording a blow-off e-mail only to see if I can get a response like the one above. Sure it’s vapid and without an real meaning, like mine, but it’s still better than response type 2, though I secretly wish for a type 2 response one of these days. I’m not explaining it well, but basically I want to see if I can word an e-mail polite enough to have it returned with politeness when maybe it isn’t even called for or expected. It makes no real sense, and yet it almost seems like my prime motivator in my dating efforts.

Just Two Points of Fact

2011-04-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

It’s silly, by the way, to claim the meal you just ate is the one you’re shitting out a half hour later. Just an FYI it takes, on average, 24 to 36 hours for food to move from mouth to colon to anus. Just saying, if we all pooped moments after eating we’d never gain a pound. It is a fallacy and serious pet peeve of mine to claim otherwise.

While I’m kvetching, which basically all this blog is anyway, the term homemade in any other context other than something actually made in a home is just wrong yet it’s used everywhere. Companies use it for cookies, microwave meals, and other highly processed food items make them sound homey and nutritious when they are anything but. In restaurants the term is used to indicate quality yet what they really mean is scratch of housemade. Homemade is being used in a way that is disingenuous and thus not accurately and that’s the problem I have with it. Just in case you were curious about my thoughts on homemade now you have them.

I Used Two Words I Like a Lot

2011-04-10T19:09:00.000-07:00

The proliferation of cell phones, what with their ability to surf the internet, take pictures and video, control or lives is nothing new and surely said trend has no end in sight. This I do not really mind, and am just as much a victim as the rest of us, looking down at a tiny screen rather than the world around us. It is how society is changing for better or worst. There is but one exception to this trend that doesn’t just annoy, but actually, to a certain degree makes me irate; watching yokels and goobers spending a concert taking endless pictures and videos of the proceedings on the stage rather than just soaking it up and enjoying the moment.

A snapshot from time to time makes sense, but every song, every moment a new musician changes stage position? It’s foolishness wasting so much time looking at the show through the phone just so days or years later they can look at a crappy picture and be like “oh, yeah I remember that.” What’s the point? It baffles me, but not nearly as much as the fools that feel compelled to record videos of the show with their phones. Two universal truths about these videos; 1) the videos will be shaky and of poor quality, 2) the sound will be awful. That means the videos taken of concerts via cell phones are all nugatory.

Run an experiment next time you’re on YouTube if you’re in doubt about the above paragraph. Figure out a band you like. Search for a clip of that band live and was taken with a cell phone. That’s not hard by the way; about 95% of live clips on YouTube were done with a cell phone. Now try and watch it for more than 30 seconds. Can’t be done, or you have far more patience than I do.

This all leads up to one of the sweetest moments of comeuppance I’ve seen in some time. At the Death Angel show this past Saturday the 9th at Dante’s I happened to be next to goober that appeared to have it in his mind to record the entire concert in 30 second clips with his crappy phone. I watched him record, save, record, save, record, save 25 clips, each one aggravating me a little more at his idiocy. I contemplated bumping with right elbow so as to make the image shaky. Turns out all my plotting was for naught. A crowd surge of truly epic proportions knocked him, myself, and everyone around us off balance, the result was his phone was knocked from his hands and lost to the sea of humanity around him. Repeated uses of lighters, and cell phone flashlight apps could not light the area enough to discern where the phone landed. It was maybe one of the most fantastic things I’d seen at show that wasn’t on the stage. That guy sucked, I’m happy he lost his phone.

Wasting Light

2011-04-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

For fun I post this bold proclamation Wasting Light Foo Fighters album that isn't even out yet unless your a pirate (arggg) like me will be my album of the year. Let's see if I feel that way 8 months from now.

I again appeal to you the readers. Ask a question, request a blog topic, I'll post with a certain level of veracity I promise.

2011-04-08T22:32:00.001-07:00

A short one for Friday. I believe that a man working on the 9th floor, or maybe he just really likes that particular restroom, is peeing a mixture of urine –normal- and blood –not normal. What’s more he’s inaccurately peeing a mixture of urine and blood. It’s a mystery I both want solved and to remain as such for eternity.

Fauntleroy the Food Demon Boy

2011-04-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

Two food centric posts in a row will round out my thoughts nutrition of which I fully recognize aren’t wholly rational.

Okay, have you ever woken up at like 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning to take a piss, have a thought occur to you in this semi-awake state that makes a lot of sense and so you then seize on its brilliance like you’ve had maybe the cleverest most inspired idea you’ve ever had. You then stumble back to bed while meditating on it a bit longer before slumber resumes. In the morning you wake up and the thought comes back and it’s lost a lot of its luster. It no longer is brilliant or clever or even coherent. Disappointed you resume your lackluster existence. I don’t know why I made the end of that so mean to the 2nd person. Sorry everyone.

Point is this happens to me a lot, maybe one in every three days. This also means I seldom make I through the night without getting up to take a leak, whatever, I drink a lot of water. So but, this is how Fauntleroy the Food Demon Boy was born.
First, understand I have this habit rife in shame that sees me around 10:30 p.m. struggling to tame my sweet tooth. When I cave and say “fuck it” I head to the garage and hand to mouth an obscene amount of brown sugar. Or, if I’m feeling like a bad roommate and an all around dick I skim some of Theo’s and Amanda’s food. It’s really a pretty deplorable habit two fold, fold one, I’m usually destroying a day’s worth of good eating and activity. Fold two, I’m taking food I didn’t pay for. And of course the real problem is once I say “fuck it” I open what I call the Flood Gates and just eat way more than I should with the thought “hey already had some might as well have more.” On the mornings after I do this I wake up and feel like crap for obvious reasons and I’m usually not all that hungry which means my favorite meal of the day is indeed wasted on me. All around it’s bad news indeed. Oh, and if I’ve been drinking, forget it, it’s real bad news.

One whizzing session earlier last month after I’d caved the night before I was meditating on how crappy I felt from doing that and from the very depths of my mind the name Fauntleroy emerged. I had named my habit and everything it encompassed. It was just a few turns of the brain later when I added Food Demon Boy. What we have is now a fairly powerful mental tool to thwart this habit for I can now think “I will not feed you Fauntleroy the Food Demon Boy; you will not best me this evening.” Yes, I really do think such things. Mock if you must it’s really pretty effective I’ve more or less killed this habit in one month’s time and feel wholly better about myself as a result.

Hey, I never promised that blogging for 30 days in a row would be a great idea.

2011-04-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

It comes as no surprise that I rather like television. Brain rotting be damned I think it programming has gotten to a point that it’s both horrible and awesome at the same time. On the one hand the shows the proliferate basic cable (Dirty Jobs, Deadliest Catch, Pawn Stars, Hoarders: Buried Alive, Cake Boss, American Pickers, Storage Wars, Ice Road Truckers… I’m going to stop there since I believe you get the point) are interesting and have merit, but have also gotten to the point that there are so many of them they have lost any interest of merit they once had. In other terms, here’s how I view such programming “oh cool, that’s what driving a truck on a road made of ice is like, ohh, that hoarder is disgusting that urine soaked bed makes me want to dry heave, hey I had no idea that job existed or that it was so dirty, interesting” but by now the point where I’m at is maybe one episode of each of these shows need to exist or maybe one 6 episode season. I mean, even the dimmest of bulbs has to recognize that every episode is more or less the same. What I like about this programming is it gives a peek into a life I otherwise didn’t know existed, but at the end of the day all I need is a peek and not constant exposure.

Extreme Couponing is a show I loathe and very much like the ones above. The problem is that these spend-thrift homemakers (95% of the people on the show are stay at home mothers who probably work harder at clipping and organizing coupons and also planning out these epic shopping trips than their husbands do at their own jobs) create these massive stockpiles of food. However, for food to be stockpilable (my own word) it would stand to reason they need to be pumped full of preservatives and sugar. Those two things being my personal nemesis in the food world. I just hate products that have more than like 10 ingredients. In fact, if the food item may not spoil in about a week and a half it probably isn’t even on my radar as something I’d eat. The exceptions here clearly being lentils, oats and almonds, and those items are literally one ingredient deep. Anyway, my point is as much money as these people are saving is paid back in full and then some by the awful diet it forces their families to eat. “Hooray we saved 98% of our grocery bill, Oh, Stanford has developed early onset diabetes, how will we afford the insulin?” To say nothing of the fact that seldom does a household need 45 bottles of BBQ sauce, untold boxes of sugary cereal, and cases upon cases of Gatorade, et al. It’s a real hot button issue for me to see such brazen hoarding of food. I’ve only seen one instance where a guy donated some of his stockpile to the local food bank. That was commendable, but as far as I can tell all too rare.

Yesterday evening (a mild oxymoron with word day and evening in conjunction) I was shouting at the TV while a woman explained why buying a large box of instant potatoes didn’t make as much sense as buying many smaller packets of the same product. What got me so very hot was that wandering over the damn produce aisle would provide the potato needs only they’d be real, fresh, and whole heck of a lot better tasting and for the body then the dehydrated crap that was in those packets.

2011-04-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

Day two of my 30 day blogging challenge and I’m drawing a blank. Actually I have two blog topics I want to cover (one about Fauntleroy the Food Demon Boy, and another about maybe the worst date I’ve ever been on) but that still only gets me to day 5 or so. This is a copout post. Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to unveil 97-95 of the 1-100 metal albums list as they are ranked by me list. I have some funny stories for those albums, and if anything I’m driving upwards through this list because I really like what I wrote for the album at the 91 spot. I’ll close this very brief post by saying that since I’m struggling coming up with topics I will gladly write any post in answer to a question anyone posts in the comments. I may give a real insight into my very being if someone just shows some interest. Or maybe I’ll start a novella right in the very space. Hope against the novella, hope against it with all your might.

You're Not Perfect Either

2011-04-04T20:29:00.000-07:00

What I’m about to describe was a secret I was pretty sure I was taking to my grave. However, looking back on it through the prism of time I can see that this story is pretty funny. And heck, why not start off my 30-day blogging challenge with an embarrassing story?

Super Bowl Sunday this year was a nice day for those that care to remember. I was bored and I remember thinking that going for a walk was a really good idea before settling down to watch the game. With Holy Grail’s Crisis in Utopia set to play in my ears I walked out the front door for the first time in my spring jacket. I walked through my neighborhood with my feet aiming to the heights of Mt. Tabor. I walked up Mt. Tabor, I then walked down Mt. Tabor. I walked with maybe some vague idea of making my way over to Powells on Hawthorne. My mind making its way through the matrices of choices involving, current time, time of kickoff, distance to be walked, money that could be spent on books, whether or not buying more books when I have a backlog to get through, using the restroom I Powells as the need had arisen, and on and on. This went on for a shockingly long amount of time. Main problem being is at this point I felt like this walk had been a waste of time and I was really bored. I wanted something to show for my efforts, a book would be good enough.

I settled on skipping Powells and proceeded towards home, while picking up the pace as my need to pee had gone from “sorta hafta” to “whoa nelly maybe I need to start looking at bush options.” But everywhere I looked people and their judging eyes were cast upon me. I was in residential streets so whizzing in someone’s front yard seemed like folly. I pressed onwards.

I decided that this would be an exercise in my ability to do something I have no ability in, which is to say, my ability to hold a pee. Even if I saw a place to pee I was not going to take it. Seemed like a good plan and I was doing a really good job of not focusing on the need to pee. I mean it was there. It and it was making me really uncomfortable. Still I trekked onward counting down each block and taking absolutely no time to stop and smell any roses along the way. At one point I passed a woman doing some weeding in her front yard and was compelled to ask if I could step in to use her restroom. I abstained; this was my burden to bear.

And here’s the inevitable moment where I admit that 6 blocks from my house, quite against my will, I started to pee myself. My hands went to physically stem the flow but even they were powerless to stop this wave of waste surging forth in my pants. To experience this totally unwanted act while fully awake and 100% in control of all capacities except for clearly the one I wanted to be most in control of at the moment is maybe one of the oddest things that’s happened to me in sometime. As I made water in my pants for the first time since I was in preschool I hurried to a haven between a trailer and some bushes. Totally hidden from view, finally with my wee maker outside my pants where it belongs for what it was doing, I breathed slow steady breaths and peed for what felt like an eternity. That done I walked home happy my jeans are dark enough to maybe help hide the mess I had made.

Those short six blocks were not comfortable. Upon finally arriving home I stripped down and took a shower of shame before putting my jeans in the washer for their very own private cleaning cycle.

My Apologies (Updated! (Or w/ Further Apologies)

2010-09-25T19:00:00.001-07:00

Okay, yes I haven't posted in quite a bit and when I finally get around to revealing what has compelled me to update this space you're probably just going to be baffled, but here we go.

I watch a lot of television. I'm not embarrassed about this fact. To quote one of my favorites, Mr. Homer Jay Simpson, "mmm...television, teacher, mother, secret lover. And I'd add that those pedantic assholes that act like watching TV is a waste of time probably ought to get their heads out their asses because a well crafted and entertaining television show in a lot of ways is better than the finest movies*. Yes, I love TV so much I vastly prefer it to film. It isn't like when I watch television my mind is inert and I've switched off. Because of the way my mind works I constantly ask questions to myself and I assure it keeps me very busy. No, this is hardly unique, I'm not special, I'm just saying that even the basest of programming gets my mind going.

Case in point, and the reason for this blog. MTV's Made had my full attention for probably a good three years in college. If Made was on I was watching. The concept if you've somehow never seen it is thus, one person would like to be made into something that most of the time is diametrically opposite to what they are known for. Geek into cheerleader, fat slug into triathlete, Autistic kid into Prom King (okay I think he was Autistic, whatever).

So but, the episode I sort of want to finish more than watching the rest of the Beavers and Boise State is something like "Geek wants to be made into a person that can ask her dream date to prom. (or have her dream date ask her to same)" I think they are running on fumes. And here's my issue. Diana targets David as her dream date. With camera, a sound dude, and probably a a producer or two trailing we follow her as she attempts to gain confidence, dress less androgynously, and eventually attempt to get David to ask her to prom. What in all of this is David aware of? Clearly he must know something given the omni-present camera crew. Do they tell him, she wants to ask you to prom? Do they just tell the school, (oh right, this is almost always about high school kids) at large what her goal is? In this episode Diana does eventually sort of ask David out as she lays the ground work for that prom date. He treats her more like a new friend than an actual date. I'm upset because this seems like a bad position to be in as a target date. If the goal is known then he looks like a jerk for not asking her to prom. But what if David really has no desire to hang out with Diana in any capacity friend or date? Does anyone care about how David feels? I can tell you I do, I care deeply. He's just a kid too, he's got this young woman pining for him, and kudos to her for putting herself out there, but doesn't it seem super hard for David to turn her down in this scenario? During the filming did David go home and feel nothing but angst as he turned over what he can do in his head over and over? I care about this a lot and what's worse is I'll never know David's perception of the events shown. I'll never meet David and ask him if having Diana tab him as her dream date was difficult to deal with, if it added some stress to his senior year. I'll just never know, but it won't keep me from wondering.

Addendum: Oh fuck me, and this is why I should have finished the episode before posting. David is a shrewd kid. Check this, because he totally outflanked me and my thoughts. Diana asked David out at school, but David ends up turning her down. And what's even better his reason is that "he promised himself he couldn't date anyone, and doesn't plan to for a couple of years." Heartbroken Diana says "oh, thanks" and walks away. (I've pretty much had the exact same reaction after getting turned down, shut it) See how brilliant that is? If it's a lie, whatever in like 6 months school and the summer is over and it doesn't matter. Sure, he may have screwed himself out of a prom date because how bad would it look if he showed up to prom with a date? Pretty bad, right? If it was a lie then he clearly just didn't have any interest in taking anyone to prom.. He didn't have to say he wasn't interested in her specifically, but to all women for "a couple of years." Very smart David, very smart. Good lie, or interesting truth, either way he played it as well as possible. Oh, don't worry about Diana. She ends up taking Trey who she met in San Diego as apart of her Made journey. Pretty cool really because she winds up with a cute kid from out of state as her prom date and also scores her first kiss. And bonus points to the episode since it took place in Oregon. Clearly, a pretty good episode of Made.

I'm pretty sure I should be a television critic.

*Yeesh, that is probably a tad hyperbolic, no TV show can outclass Wall-E. Wait, is Wall-E my favorite movie of all time?

Four Years Later

2010-07-23T21:52:00.000-07:00

Normally the arc for my anger is pretty short. I get royally pissed off, then it fades within like five minutes and I’m back to normal. Sure, I get a little pissy easier than most, but in general I’m actually more laid back than I feel I get credit for. I like histrionics to a certain degree too, so trying to really gauge when I’m really upset and just playing into that idea can be difficult. And I’ll grant that some things, like last week’s soccer game when I had an entire team try and tell me I was “too aggressive” and that I was “fouling everyone on the field” both claims being patently ridiculous still has me a little riled up a week later. But, for me to be as hot as I am right now can only mean the event causing this has to be a pretty big deal. What I’m trying to get at here is that today marks the day when, four years ago, I called my mother, in tears, and announced that I had to abandon my attempt to cycle across the country and thus became the event I will always refer to as The Failed Bike Trip.

With four years of hindsight I’m going to delve into the anatomy of this failure and some other things I most likely haven’t actually articulated in words or in type.

Now it would be an overstatement to try and claim that I think about the event every day of my life, but understand that this failure looms large in my mind. It is always there, in the background, something that I turn to and mull over sometimes once a week or sometimes more frequent. It comes as no surprise to most that I’m fairly critical of myself. My successes I always deem as limited and trivial, it is always the failures I dwell on and, as I’ve said a few times already, this is the largest. Now I’m not totally sure where I’m going with all this, but I suppose I should take you back to the quitting moment, or perhaps I few days prior. It may be easier for me to delineate the reason why I feel this trip failed.

The trip failed because:

Perhaps neither one of use was fully committed to the idea, but certainly my travel partner, I believe, never had one positive thought about the feasibility of our trip once we were on the road. Some of this had to do with the short timeline we gave ourselves to do the trip. I believe it was something like 74 days. Now ideally we should have had 90+ but part of the reason we departed so late into July was that it allowed me to collect a check from my work for two week’s vacation as I was quitting two years to the day of my hire date. This was a point of contention but I needed the money to fund the trip, so we departed in the second half of July which, in hindsight, is probably too late for a trip of this nature. It also meant we dealt with some truly hot days in the saddle. But what this really did was put the seed of doubt into my partner’s head that the mileage demands of our trip in the amount of time was impossible. He pulled out 6 days into the trip because that seed had sprouted into a tree of doubt. Now you see why I almost never try to write with analogies or metaphors, I’m awful at them, a tree of doubt? It stays, whatever.

We foolishly assumed our road bikes could withstand the rigors of touring. In reality my Fuji suffered a bent rear derailleur hanger pretty much instantly that made shifting gears pretty impossible. My travel partner’s bike had a myriad or problems that I can’t remember everything that went wrong, but again, any minor issue became one more reason for him to turn around.
Another problem was we used trailers rather than panniers. The trailers added weight and made riding more difficult. We were somewhat stuck with this choice as my bike had no place for panniers to attach; hence the trailer. But I’ve come to loathe this trailer. It sits in my garage, bent, slightly broken. When I see it reminds me of failure.

I think that one of the main problems, if not the problem we had, was we started too late in the day consistently. Imagine this, we would hit the sack around 9 or 10 at night so then even with generous 8 hours of sleep we should have been up around 5 or 6 and on the road maybe an hour later. I was chomping on the bit to get going around 6 a.m. You know, beat the heat, and get in 50 miles before the sun began to sap our will to live, that type of thing. My travel partner felt different, and while I should have fought harder to augment our schedule I didn’t. He pretty much refused to get up early. We started too many days closer to 10:00 rather than 6:00. Now do you think that four more hours per day would have made getting our mileage marks easier? Of course you do because you’re not an idiot.

If I had to distill it down the reasons for failure were those three right there. But now would you say that reasons are just another word for excuse? I would, those are the excuses for failure. And the thing is while it is so very easy to pin everything on my travel mate I have a real level of self loathing that the moment things turned tough I bailed too.

Okay, now let me take you to the exact moment he turned around.

We had just left Prineville, we were on 26E about to climb up a pretty nice sized climb to the Ochoco Pass State Park or similar. At this point the gears I had access to were too high for me to spin without killing myself, or so low that I was spinning myself out. Neither was good, but I was making the best of a bad situation I felt. We passed by Ochoco Reservoir and maybe a mile later he told me to stop so we could discuss something. I knew at that moment it was over. He laid out a number of reasons why he didn’t want to continue. Our bikes state of disrepair was mentioned, but at the core of everything he said was his belief that what we were doing was not possible; it permeated every word he was spoke. He began to mention events he was missing, notable a wedding, and a family reunion, things he knew he was sacrificing for this trip. He also mentioned the stress of having a short time line to secure student loans and housing for the upcoming school year. After some analysis, no doubt these negative thoughts were rattling around in his head as thoughts do with hours in the saddle and he concluded the trip was not worth it. I, in a moment of true weakness, asked if the reason he was turning around was because of me. If I could take back any string of words in my life those would be them. With tears in my eyes we split up the gear I’d need to proceed onwards, and we parted ways with minimal words.

I continued on, the temperature dropping, the sun dipping, and I began to fear that I wouldn’t make the top of the pass prior to dark. I was running out of water, but I remember I could see a river off the side of the road. I was confident that so long as I was near the river I would be fine. The road climbed somewhat leaving the river behind. I looked out and saw endless grassy areas abutting what would have been beautiful hills had I not had intense feelings of isolation and fear rumbling inside of me. Finally, I began to wish a car would come up behind me and take me to the campground that was my destination for the night. That is exactly what happened, two of the nicest people, a couple, whose names are lost now, stopped and scooped me up bike, trailer et all and took me to the campground.

Once up there I happened upon a hippie couple that was curious about my trailer and bike. Turns out the man was a bike mechanic who took a look at my bike and assessed that I needed a new derailleur hanger but did his best to bend the one I had back into shape. He guessed that if I was careful when removing or hooking up the trailer to or from my bike I could avoid bending the new hanger when I got one and continue on my trip. He encouraged me to not let this set back force me to turn around which I had conceded to him was weighing heavily on my mind.

I then went to a table, laid out my gear, and penned a journal entry that took an extraordinary long time compose before spending a near sleepless night crying, wishing things turned out differently, and eventually resolving that turning back was my best option.

I was up the next day early as I wasn’t sure what to do really. I slammed down some oatmeal and settled on cycling back to Redmond but not before calling my mom which sort of brings us back to where we began this entry. Once in Redmond, where I took up a post outside a Rays I sat on bench right near the exit/entrance with all my gear fielding the question “where you going?” so many times that eventually I just told people this was this the my final destination and that I had started in Astoria six days prior.

Back in Portland 68 days earlier than I had planned I play a soccer game before going home to find, out my life was about to take a serious downturn. That however is a different topic altogether.

But where does this leave me now? Certainly this moment still stings, but it also only affirms in my mind that I will do this trip. I say this with supreme confidence; I will bike across the country. I do not want to romanticize the idea as I do remember during the scant time on the road that I also was filled with doubt, and the days on the road were simply not fun. However it is entirely possible that what brought me down during this time was my travel mate. I do not feel as though we were a good fit for this trip, though in hindsight that is easy to say. But anyway, my current mental outlook is sort of like this. Once I’m done with the epic Les and Mark Eat America road trip in October I will begin to save and research touring bikes. I will pinpoint the bike I want, most likely a Fuji, and I will wait until I can get a good deal. Then I will research and procure panniers. From there it will be finding the time and money to do the trip. Two years from now? Seems possible. I would gladly exchange my current job for this trip. In fact, there are few jobs I would keep over this trip. I’m also leaning towards making the trip alone, which I know my mother is already worrying about. And with that I feel I have exhausted some of what I have to say about the Failed Bike Trip.

Booooooo!

2010-03-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

Mark Walsh just flashed back to this memory and wanted to share. When Mark was 8 or 9 he was interned in an after school daycare program which generally wasn’t awful since he had a trouble making running mate in Jacob. However, Jacob was given the gift of being allowed to go home right after school weeks before Mark thus getting out of daycare and away from the tyranny of school bullies like Brian Geck. Mark, now alone, had to still drink lukewarm pineapple, eat stale bagels, and hang out with kids he didn’t like, nor wanted to be around without the very first friend he ever made. In short, Mark went from happy, to ornery and sullen. This came to a head when one afternoon Mark, lost in a sea of ennui, took a trip to the restroom that lasted 45 minutes where he did nothing but take a little poop, and then sat in the room enjoying his time alone. When he reentered the cafeteria the woman in charge asked what took him so long he responded, and 28 year old Mark composing this can verify this is verbatim, “I was taking a dump, get off my back!” Yup, this didn’t go over well at all, parental units were notified, backsides were tanned (not really, but punishment was doled out). The moral here is that though 20 years have passed 28 year-old Mark can totally identify with his young self only this time it is much worse.

1-100 (101-98)

2009-11-20T23:48:00.000-08:00

The Preamble for this dauntingly large project can be found here.

101. Wizard - Thor
Release: 01.31.09
Genre: Power-Speed (Speedy Power?)

Sven D'anna - Vocals
Dana Boland - Guitar
Michael Maass - Guitar
Volker Leson - Bass
Soren Van Heek - Drums

Producer: Andy Horn

101? Okay yeah somehow I ended up with 101 albums for this list and frankly I thought way too long to remove an album so I'm rolling with it even though I'm still going to call this project 1-100. We are at the very bottom here which means, well it means, don't expect a lot done here. There will be so much to come, but spending pages discussing 101 seems pointless.

What have we here? A concept album? Sign me the fuck up! Okay I'm lyric deaf so I'm unsure of the the story being told. I can safely conclude it has something to do with Thor, the god of Thunder. The music is awesome, it is from the power branch of metal, so big sounds, soaring vocals, all around awesomeness. Wikipedia tells me that Wizard has been called Germany's answer to Manowar. I will admit that I was unaware that Germany had to answer a question probably never asked. Why is this album on the list? As discussed in the Preamble a single song is enough to land an album on the list, in this case it is the song The Visitor, which is stunning. Okay I should explain something. I download albums in clusters. Like 6-7 albums in one go. I then listen to them over the course of that week. This way the stuff I remember after only one listen I can safely assume is the cream rising to the top. In this case I absently listened to this album cleaning the house or something and moved on, but then later I remember The Visitor and wanting to hear it again. This meant I had to try and remember which album it came from. Once I did that I haven't forgotten this album since. It stands up well and belongs down here or rather up here starting this list off right.

100. Corpsing - The Stench of Humanity
Release: 02.09
Genre: Death

Giuseppe Cutispoto - Vocals
Mick Custipoto - Guitar
Wizzard Baboon (we can safely assume that is not his real name I would think) - Vocals & Bass
Baron (more of a title than a name I'm pretty sure) - Drums
David Adambery - Sound Synthesis and Soundscapes (?)

I will admit right off the bat that me and death metal don't have a real history together. I've always drifted towards the thrash, progressive, and power spectrum of the metal genres so this being one of the few death metal albums on the list speaks to my general ignorance to this genre if anything else. However, I will say this album hits me just right. It is hard to sit through, punishing and brutal, and fuck all for trying to parse out a single fucking word yelled at me as I listen to it. In short I love it. What makes them a little different is their use of various samples to add depth to the punishment of the songs. They have a whole guy on sound synthesis and soundscapes which sure as fuck to me sounds like keyboardist, or synthesizer, but that isn't metal right? Right, so he's responsible for soundscapes. I may mock, but it are these little bits that extend the songs and make them a little on the eerie side which I think we can all agree is for the better. Plus, just look at that album cover. A dung beetle! Also, and plus, you have to sort of just love the album title right?

99. Verdunkeln - Einblick In Den Qualenfall
Release: 05.01.07
Genre: Black

Gnarl
Ratatyske (um, yup that's all I know about the band. We can assume those aren't real names? What the do heavens knows, makes stunning music? Sure I'll by that)

First let me just run some numbers by you.

8:00
15:43
7:11
8:55
17:06
6:04

That would be the track length for each of the songs on this album. Yes, the tracks are long, but that means but one thing; each of them, the tracks, are an epic sonic journey. At times pulsing, beating, thrashing, and a wall of sound, at other times a single jangly guitar and haunting echoed drums. The albums gets bonus points for creating a true sense of feel. By this I mean the constant use of some sounds, like rain, makes this album feel gloomy, depressing, and maybe a little menacing. It is a black metal album so that's pretty much the whole goal here. Though in this case the music is a little more musical and less noisome than a lot of black albums separating it slightly from its peers. As if the title of the album or the band name didn't tip you off this is a German outfit. As such I am in no way prepared to offer any lyrical insight seeing as I can't make out the lyrics much less translate them. A recurring theme, as if you couldn't already tell, is my inablity to understand lyrics. But anyway it is black metal so that really isn't the point to begin with. The point of black metal lyrics and vocals is to sound inhuman and scare you. Mission accomplished here. One of my metal resources does tell me that the lyrical content is shaded towards the fantasy, philosophical spectrum. Good to know. This is the perfect album to put on and let it sort of seep into your brain as you do something else like read, or take a little nap like I once did, the napping, while waiting for a car to get serviced at Beaverton Toyota one day for work. I wasn't actually asleep but dozing and letting the album sort of wrap around my brain and settle in. I like music like this, the type that you can actively listen to and enjoy, or let it idle in the background and osmosize (sic) on in. Either way this album, with it epic length tracks is one I am quite found of even if I have no idea what is going on here.

98. Static X - Wisconsin Death Trip
Release: 03.23.99
Genre: Techno metal

Wayne Static - Vocals & Guitars
Koichi Fukuda - Guitar (He left the band after this album and the band has sort of sucked ever since.)
Tony Campos - Bass
Ken Jay - Drums

Producer - Ulrich Wild

When I was 17 or 18 I feel in love hard with Wisconsin Death Trip. I couldn't put it down. The whole thing fascinated me. The music was catchy, and hard, and the vocals were punchy and fun. The album had lyrics like the following from Love Dump:

"Your shit's like chocolate cake
And your ass smells like a rose
I really hate you"

Are you kidding how does an 18 year-old kid not both love those lyrics and crack up each time? Impossible. So yeah, I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to this album, plus the whole thing is only like 44 minutes so listening to it a few times a day (which I did frequently) only took up like an hour and a half, . Also for someone who is lyric deaf there was something nice to me that I could pretty much sing along with every song. Like the tune Fix which I would often intone in moments of boredom while working at Fred Meyer,

"Tune it in
Chill out
Drop dead
I need a fix"

For some reason I said this endlessly at work. I didn't even do drugs, so clearly I never needed a fix of any sort (donuts not withstanding). I was awkward, okay? How awkward, well there is this. I was finally going to quit Fred Meyer in May of 2000. I wanted to enjoy the waning months of high school so I turned in my two weeks. During one night as I faced the store I was paired with a girl that the entire store pretty much joked that often her and I were fooling around with one another. This, not true. But it was the store joke of sorts, I broke this girl's thumb with a shopping cart once and rather than get in any trouble I was just told to change my flirting style. But during this one night it was just the two of us and as we set in facing the cookies and crackers aisle, a notoriously time consuming aisle. (incidently why do I remember things like the aisle I was facing on this night, but not, like my mom's birthday?) And as we set in this girl begins to regale me with the various outdoor venues she's had sex with her boyfriend. I honestly can still not pinpoint how this became the topic of conversation, I certainly did not steer it that direction, that much I assure you. But after like 7 stories like this, um yes, she was a tad slutty as we shall soon see, she turned to me, asked me stop facing and like just pay attention for a second, and would I maybe be interested in going to the staff bathroom and maybe like receiving a so-long-you've-been-a-great-co-worker parting blow job, well would I? Well as it turns out I would not, and I turned her down cold, well more like luke warm because I did ask about five times if this offer was legit and valid and not some like trick for me to say yes so then she can go and gab to someone else. It, the offer, was legit and valid but understandably I turned it down. Not for obvious reasons like the staff bathroom was pretty gross, but more like she had a boyfriend and I just had to endure countless stories involving her having sex with her boyfriend. A Boyfriend the had oddly enough said many times that very evening that she really did love. You can understand perhaps then how I could say no, but then also I assumed that this was a watershed moment, I'd been offered my first sex act and more would surely come a rolling in, right? Um, right?

But still, back to the album, it is a totally awesome album that captures a very precious moment in my life and not just the story above, but my whole glorious second semester of senior year of high school. It was the partial soundtrack to that time of my life, and well, it just takes me back to being a young dumb kid working his first real job, not thinking in depth about anything of importance and just very much having fun in the now, much like the album.

1-100 The Preamble

2009-11-11T14:18:00.000-08:00

Preamble:
Listening to, obsessing over, keeping track of, metal is largely a solo pursuit. Not a lot of people seem to understand the nuances of what I consider to be the best and most varied genre of music, and, more troubling, they write off a whole genre just because they refuse to give it the adequate time to sink in. Sure they may not like growling vocals and down tuned guitars, but what about operatic singing with high production values? It exists in metal, it all does actually. Sure we all have busy lives and trying to pinpoint one or two bands or sounds that may appeal them is a daunting task given the dearth of bands and sounds metal offers. I get that, so I don’t get all pissy when someone out right denies the merits of metal. It is however a somewhat isolating experience to listen to a lot of music and not have a single person to discuss said music with. With that in mind I begin the most epic project this blog has ever seen. Okay, sure, this blog seldom sees a project, so the competition is not all that fierce, but whatever. Over the next two or so months what I will endeavor to do is rank my top 100 metal albums, and with each album I will attempt to explain why it is awesome, but also, and this may be key for the entertainment value for you the reader, but tell a variety of stories I associate with the albums that, when all is pretty much complete, will read like my autobiography as it relates to metal. First some things to know about the compiling of my list as enumerated below.

1. This is my list, so really, there might be some omissions where you’ll be like “dude, you totally dropped the ball there.” Maybe I did, but the thing is I don’t often agree with the metal community at large. This being for a variety of reasons (most likely to spelled out in the further enumerations). For instance, only one Mastodon and one Iron Maiden album made the list. This might seem like heresy but here’s the deal, Mastodon has one great album, just one. It made the list, their latest offering Crack the Skye is being hailed as brilliant metal release. Don’t believe it, it sounds like fucking elevator music and that’s the truth (in this man’s eyes). Same with Maiden, they have one great album, on the list, maybe two decent ones, and a lot of wankery. But hey, I’m just one person, please feel free to disagree.

2. Production values matter, like a lot, like more than it probably should. A lot of people will tell you that Slayer’s Show No Mercy or Haunting the Chapel are awesome, I’ll tell you bullshit on that. The music, yes is fine, but they might have recorded it through two tin cans hooked up to string that lead to a microphone like in another fucking county from their studio. Same with Sepultura’s Beneath the Remains which a lot of people view as seminal and I’m like “well, no, your values suck so whatever.” This means a lot of albums form the 80’s frankly didn’t even get a consideration. The exception here of course being the few black metal albums on the list where the whole object is to just say “fuck it” to production values in which case the shitty sound is intended and for some reason this is okay.

3. One song, one completely brilliant song can make an album and land it on the list.

4. I have a stupid fetish with concept albums. Albums that tell a story I have an unabashed love for. This is particularly odd since I’m pretty much lyric deaf and can’t even keep track of what songs are actually about for the most part. It’s like reading a book but only taking in the pictures only most of the time there are no pictures. I don’t get it, I really don’t, but the concept album pretty much owns me.

5. I also love all things nautical. Make your album about water, the ocean, seabeasts, any of that crap, shit even just name your band name something nautical and I’ll be drawn in. I’m beginning to feel like I should have been an oceanography major.

6. I’m going to cuss a lot; this is all about metal after all.

7. This should have been higher up, but I’m not going to reorder things. This is a metal only list, hard rock, rock, none of that makes the list (with one exception). Yes, this means there are some painful omissions, which will most likely be highlighted, but metal only.

8. Yes this is a metal centric project but I cannot stress enough how many little snippets of my life will be retold. It will be entertaining I promise you that.

The plan is to post like 10 albums at a time, but depending on length that may change. With that have some patience as I will need to listen to the album, again, and again, and then compose my thoughts so each album on the list may be a page of text. It means that postings will be somewhat infrequent as I find the time needed to make this list as good as I want it to be. I’ll always reference each blog back to this one so you can keep in mind my 8 points which I feel are important.

I'm 100% living up to the name of this blog.

DFW IJ 11.09 Do It!

2009-10-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

I'm going to offer all readers of this fine blog a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As some may very well know My favorite book of all time, by a distance and value that is literally immeasurable, is David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. The book, which was published in 1996 is largely set in the fictionlized year of 2009 (The Year of the Adult Depends Undergarment (wouldn't you love to understand that reference? Well you can if you read the book!)) and in the month of November of that year. So you see, doing a reading of this book starting next month only makes sense right? I've got two other people on board, but if you've ever felt an inkling to read this book right now is the time. Ideally I'd like to get a reading group going, not a sissy one that meets fact to face, though that would be fun, but one that inspires the longest most awesome e-mail conversation to ever grace our inboxes. This will be the fourth time I've read the book so I'm very capable at this point of answering questions, and offering encouragement to make it through the book. In fact I may be the best reading group leader of all time for this book, okay probably not, but I'm certianly the most qualified person you know.

I want to talk a little about the book, but to do so I first want to crib this little synopsis from the ever-awesome site goodreads.com which I feel like you also need to join and be my friend. Social networking + Books = fantastic.

"In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novel The Broom of the System. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture - our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our pleasures, our abilities to define ourselves."

Understand that prior to reading IJ when I was 18 or 19 I never really read for pleasure and I certainly didn't read anything all that great. DFW and this book inspired me to be the reader I am today. If you associate me with books, reading, and a love of words understand this is solely because of this book. I'm not sure everyone will like it as much as I do, but I also feel like making your way through this book is one of the more rewarding reading experiences you can have. I just want as many people as I know to read it so I have more people to talk to about my favorite book. Understand that at my core as a human I feel I should be defined by my love of metal, and my love of this book. In short, if you choose to read this book next month I honestly feel like you'd be extending a new level of friendship to me and I'd feel indebted to you. Is that weird?

You can find copies of this book in paperback for 10 dollars new. A 10th anniversary edition was published in 2006 with a forward by David Eggers. The new price of that edition is $10. You can probably find it used for even cheaper. I assure you, you may never find a better bargain for a piece of entertainment than 10 dollars or less for this book when you consider the number of hours you'll need to finish it.

Consider joining me on this journey through one of the 20th centuries greatest books, I feel like you won't be sorry. And at the very least if you hate it we'll have another reason to argue, and hey, arguing is always fun.

Full Yet Empty

2009-10-09T17:32:00.001-07:00

I leave you this weekend with this which is filed under “Mark is a touch crazy, neurotic and paranoid” folder of his life.

When I ride my bike around town I’m leery of a few things, but the thing I’m most concerned about for some reason is someone on foot while the wait for a bus, walk on a sidewalk, loiter, whatever, is to extend their arm out and clothesline me off my bike. Yes, this is a real concern for me. So real is the concern I will always edge my bike away from the sidewalk as I attempt to gauge each person’s arm length. If this means I have to slightly veer into the traffic lane so be it. What is even more baffling is I’m convinced that the homeless are more likely to do this than a none homeless person. Where does this thought even gain any basis in reality? I think my thought process is something along the lines that those that are homeless clearly resent me for having not only a home, but also enough spare time and energy to ride a bike whereas all their energies have to go into sustaining a difficult life on the streets. Now why they would manifest this jealously (?) into causing me physical harm is anyone’s guess. In reality, let’s be honest, not a single person on the sidewalk that sees me ride by even pays me any attention. Yet, without fail this crazy thought enters my head and not only do I think it I then act on it by shifting my line to avoid their an outreached hand that is surely never to come. I do have a contingency plan should it happen. In fact I should post a series of blogs about my contingency plans should tragedy strike while riding a bike. I have plans for all manner of things that will almost assuredly never happen to me.

The inverse of the also happens. Sometimes I notice that as I ride past them they will edge away from the terminus of the sidewalk. Why, for what reason? Are they worried I will somehow clothesline them while riding? Do they not understand the physics of that act would hurt us both and me probably worse? I’m irrational.

Okay so I somewhat tell the 1-100 metal album thing was met with muted interest. I can understand that but understand this; the thing will be epic. It won’t just be music, music, music, it will be how the music shaped(s) my life with a lot of stories from my life as it relates to certain albums. I know that also doesn’t sound interesting but trust me I’m already composing bits in my head which means when the finally get transcribed to here it will be strong and fun reading.

I sat down and hammered out 58 must have albums on the list without reference to any my Zune or my CD collection. Then I added up to 83 after consulting the Zune and my CD case which means I have 17 albums still to brainstorm and then I have to set about ordering them. When the first post hits is a mystery, but I think you may like it when it does.

1-100

2009-10-07T10:57:00.001-07:00

I still can’t believe that last night I posted this as my Facebook status update, “… has big plans for his blog, details forthcoming tomorrow. He feels so lame for posting this.” It’s true I feel lame on two levels. The first being that anyone really cares about a blog I seldom if ever update, and is generally filled with prose that no one cares about when I do update it. The second, being that I’d use my Facebook account to even mention my blog, or that I use Facebook as much as I do. Sadly, this is the life I lead and this is where I’m at.

Still I trudge on in the face of lameness to revel my epic and prolific plans for this space. But first, because have I ever been direct and to the point in my writing, I’d venture to say “no,” I offer a brief explanation. Every day I take a nap during what is my lunch break despite the fact I eat my lunch a few hours prior to when I clock out. I read for a bit and then crash out for about 40 minutes. Sometimes however I crash out for about 30 minutes and then doze for the final 10 minutes. In these ten minutes my mentalese, that is my internal thoughts, often ape the exact voice from the book I’m reading. It almost feels like I have a fever dream every day only less scary and more perplexing than anything else. I also hatch various plans that almost never see the light of day because, well, a semi-concious Mark seldom thinks up anything worth actually doing. Not yesterday though, nay, yesterday was a brilliant idea that will give me more than enough reason to update this space.

Ready, here goes, and when you’re doing reading please try not to sigh too deeply in disappointment, I’ll hear it; I swear. I like lists, lists are fun, but I seldom like lists created by other people. Namely I cannot stand to look at lists created by other people about music because I just flat out disagree. Sure, that’s half the point to inspire debate but I fucking swear if I see AC/DC topping another list for anything metal related I will impotently rage at the computer screen, or TV, or whatever. I endeavor to make a list of my top 100 metal albums of all time. Each entry in this epic list will have a brief review of why the album slays, and what it means to me. Yup, I know this means I’m basically doing this solely for myself, but this is what you people have driven me to.

Don’t expect to see the fruits of this list making anytime soon, but when the first entry hits prepared for some epicness.

Hawks and Falcons

2009-09-28T09:59:00.001-07:00

It was mentioned to me this weekend that his blog needs more frequent updates. I was flattered that someone would be interested enough to make comment that I feel the need to oblige, so here goes. I would update this more frequently, but understand my life is dull and finding topics worth writing about is not easy and also explains the lack of updates.

This weekend featured the following:

The skewering of movie based on a David Foster Wallace book that is sort of unfilmable, but turns out is rather filmable it someone is clever enough to adapt the book to a screenplay. That person is none other than John “I Play Jim Halpert in TV’s The Office” Krasinski. The show off wrote, directed, and appears in the movie as the male lead. He’s like a vastly more talented Zach Braff in this regard. I liked the movie, would almost recommend it to most, and sort of want to see it again. All in all not a bad review for a film based on one of my favorite books.

I think I ate about 10 big ass cookies this weekend. The cookies, a dowry for the parking space in our driveway that goes unused, were brought by a kid in Eugene who operates a cookie making company. The cookies, the type wrapped in plastic and sitting near register at coffee shops, were all quite good. I regret nothing.

I took in the Alice in Chains concert that had to be seen and heard to be believed. Those dudes can play.

The discovery of the NFL Red Zone channel. This channel is simply amazing. I watched it transfixed for over an hour (there are no commercials!) and was sad I had to leave the house and not watch it for the afternoon games.

I did one charity ride for Transitions Global which I will now detail.

I’ve done a lot of charity rides by this point so going in I had a set of expectations. I was slated to start at 7:00 a.m. so I showed up at 6:30 a.m. for check in, and, more importantly, free bagels, donuts and coffee all of which were promised. I arrived at the parking lot and I want to first point out that at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday morning it was cold and windy. I checked in and surveyed the parking lot only to discover no coffee, no bagels, and no donuts. This, a perceived denial of a promised breakfast, is a quick way to make me a little irritated. Shortly after though the bagels appeared and mystifyingly I took a blueberry bagel despite the fact that I never like blueberry bagels, never. Sigh.

At this point it was still about 20 minutes to 7:00 so I sat in a seat and shivered while hoping some coffee would arrive. Coffee did finally arrive but no coffee cups, have no fear though we had wax paper cups designed for water not hot coffee. No matter, I swilled coffee and got my daily allowance of wax as it melted into my coffee.

This still meant no donuts which was sort of chapping my ass at this point.

The meantime I had to do something about this blasted rider number. On rides like this you get a number that is to be pinned on you so that volunteer and ride officials and easily tell you’ve paid for the ride. Ideally the number is made of a special material that is near tear and sweat proof. Not this ride, I was given a sheet of regular old 92/20 office paper. Now how in the heck is one to pin this on their back, and expect it to stay there and not tear, or get so soaked in sweat it turns to mush? At this point I realized while the intentions of this ride were fantastic, the planning and organization were lacking. I took my number and ingeniously affixed it to my backpack and went back to me chair to shiver.

As I sat in this chair it donned on me that the very cause for this ride would mean that for once a ride like this would actually have attractive females. In truth, I realized this when I checked in and all three working the registration table were attractive. But anyway back to my chair and my shivering. I sat there watching people begin to check in and noticed a cutie had looked at me as I sat and shivered. This doesn’t happen often but she turned and looked again and I caught her checking me out, probably, or not at all, whatever. No really, she was checking me out I’m sure of it.

At this point I reached about the limit of which I would tolerate sitting and shivering and decided to just forge ahead on the ride alone as the person I was to be riding with was now pushing 15 minutes late. I walked to my bike and was ready to swing my leg over the.,. but what are those? White boxes, pastries, donuts, back away from the bike and follow those boxes. Okay I didn’t actually follow the boxes so much as beat the boxes to the table where they would eventually come to rest. I had literally consumed one donut and was working my second before anyone else had noticed they had been delivered. Thus is my heightened sense of baked goods. Oh and the donuts were still warm and totally worth all the shivering.

With the donuts consumed and my patience wearing thin from having to listen to this dude talk to me about this new bike which he thought was a KLS, but seeing as KLS doesn’t exist it is most assuredly a KHS, I made a move to finally start the ride a full 20 minutes after I wanted to. I also want to point out that at this point I was fully ready to ditch out on the ride and return home.

I started riding and got caught up at a light. I checked out who was around me and sure enough the cutie that had been checking me out was now behind me and to the right. We smiled at each other and then turned my attention to the light. It turned green and what did I do? I took like three quick pedal strokes and more or less sprinted away from the group around me, including the cutie, and was again on my own. If there is an art to unintentionally staying single I’ve mastered it.

I caught up with more riders until I was again alone, then I got lost causing me to take my own route. After sometime I got back on the right route and passed the first group that left a full 15 minutes before me. I passed them and alone again out on Marine Drive at this point there isn’t much to mention anything else about the ride. From Marine Drive I made my way home as I again got lost. I didn’t stop at any of the rest stops and didn’t even bother to return to the start/finish line. I still managed to bike the 27 miles, just not on their route.

The rest of the weekend was spent watching football or doing yard work.

I feel more than a little sore today.

And you see why I don’t blog regularly, I’ve managed to get this far and say absolutely nothing of merit. I think that you my fellow readers should tell me what to write about and I’ll do it. Shoot a comment and let me know what you want to know more about. Otherwise you’ll be stuck reading about cycling, and music.

Haint

2009-07-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

It was on this day three years ago that I was back in Portland after being picked up by my mom in Redmond after I had failed to even get out of the state on what was to be a cross country bike trip. It is, to date, the single greatest failure in my life. Three years later I can accept it for what it is, but it still stings and bugs me. There were a lot of logistical mistakes to the planning of my first attempt. I learned a lot. You'll note I said first attempt. I'm doing this trip, I'm now seeing it as a solo thing, but I'm going to do it. I'm not sure when, but I can't imagine I'll ever really be at peace with myself unless I complete what I failed at three years ago.

In other news you can help me. I often sit around and wish my life would get magically better. Like, I wish that my landlords would call me up one day and say, we're looking to sell the house. If you want we will sell it to you for cheap, and it totally works and thus I have a house. Or like at work when a new vehicle is bought for someone and I have to compile all the information on the old car (mileage, tire status, repair history) to pass on to the person that buys the car I often just hope the company decides, "you know, Mark you need a car, here's car we no longer need, here's your reward for taking such good care of it for the past 2 and half years." As you can tell this is all very outlandish and not likely to happen. I understand that, but I still wish and hope for things like this all the time. With that in mind, you can help make my life magically better by taking the time to vote for me at the link provided below. See the premise is I'd get a Lexus to drive for a year. I'm not sure why only a year, but whatever, a year of having my own car is better than no car I figure. And before you just dismiss me by saying "Fuck Mark, he's not worth the time to register for this lame as promotion," please realize that most of the people currently registered to win already own a car, not only that they already own a Lexus. If anything vote for to spite those greedy fuckers. Also, you might as well forward that link on to as many people as possible. Seriously, don't let some rich asshole that already pilots a Lexus win this contest.

VOTE!

Since this is my blog I have no problem also shamelessly hitting you up for money. Once you get back from voting for me to win the Lexus swing on by the ADA Tour de Cure site and donate some money to the ADA. I'm really proud of the money I've managed so far, but asking one more time can't hurt. The ride is this Saturday with temperatures expected to be in the high 90's. Can't wait to get that patented cycling burn on my left arm and thigh.

DONATE!

Now don't go leaving thinking I never gave you anything. Well you still might feel that way soon enough, but as always my never ending quest for new music leaves me with the following recommendations for you.

Death Angel - Killing Season
Goblin Cock - Come with Me If You Want To Live
Wizard - Thor
Helloween - The Dark Ride

You can't go wrong with any of those.

Oh Happy Fun Time

2009-07-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

I'm a genius! No really, ok well, maybe not, but I did stumble across something today that I think any one of us can use. Okay, so I've been going for long bike rides after work for about five years now. In that time I've ridden in any weather imaginable and I find that the extreme heat is still my favorite. It does however pose some comfort issues. The high heat and dry air is, at times, uncomfortable. My skin feels warm, my eyes feel dry, that type of discomfort. So what is there to do? I've found two coping methods that work fairly well. The first is to always, always, always, bike through any and all sprinklers that reach the road. I like this because this comes down to chance, or knowing my routes well enough that I can anticipate where sweet, cold, watery, rain on a cloudless day may be. The downsides is this isn't common, so, while nice, really won't do. The other option is to boorishly pour water all over my head and let the mildly warm water drip, like trickle down economics, to my body below. Now this is problematic because normally on high heat days I wear a hat so my hat gets wet, which it already is as it is usually saturated with sweat, and then my face a bit and that's about it. Also, I'm fairly paranoid this water will ruin my ear buds which I think is baseless since they reside in my ear and surrounded by sweat for many hours. This is also a huge waste of water. Water being a precious resource most of the time, it is not something I want to waste.

This lead me to today's most brilliant idea. I've managed to combine the coolness of the sprinkler with the at hand nature of water-bottle-over-the-head tact, while also limiting water loss. Ready? Okay it really is pretty smart. It is simple. You take a swig of water and then, as though you are Triple H, or HHH, whatever, you mimic his entrance theatrics and spray water directly in front of you in a fine mist. Your forward motion will carry you into the mist cooling down your face, arms, upper body, and maybe even your legs. See the brilliance? And as an added bonus you get to practice doing Triple H's spit mist. Okay, yes, you are pretty much spitting on yourself, that's sort of gross maybe. Also, should a car see you, or someone else, you may look a little dumb. But I would counterpoint all that by saying the refreshment level of self made mist is really quite high and totally worth looking like an idiot.

There, don't say I never gave you a great idea. Run forth, cycle, spit a fine mist into yourself on a hot day and thank me when that cool water clings to your body cooling you down, for I am a genius.

I Was Always Partial to Sub-Zero or Liu Kang

2009-07-13T15:48:00.000-07:00

Growing up I always assumed a few things, and it is interesting how those assumptions play out the older I get. For instance, I assumed I’d never be someone that would ever communicate his annoyance or displeasure with sloppy or incorrect English to those offending parties. I just assumed I’d never be the cranky old man behind a desk penning missives to companies that spell things wrong, or make a grammatical error. Turns out I’m exactly that person. I do however think that it isn’t solely that I have the mind of a grumpy 50 year old man decrying the decay of the youthful society around him, though there is that. I think that the ease at which it takes to communicate my complaints via the internet means I’ve reached this road much earlier than anticipated.

Case in point, this Saturday (which will get its very own extended blog have no worries) I was in a car that happened to pass by Kids Kastle Learning Center in Beaverton and I quickly remarked that it didn’t seem quite correct to misspell the Kastle since this is after all a learning center. This stuck with me until today when I actually sent them the following e-mail which in order to do I actually had to fill out an application for admittance to their prestigious learning center. To be fair the learning center is really just a pre-school, but still school is where we learn things like how to spell castle rather than kastle.

“I do somewhat apologize for wasting your time since I have no kid. I'm writing because it seems strikingly odd that a learning center would actually misspell a word in the title of your business. Kastle, as you know, is not correct and while it does create a visional alteration, Kids Castle, is still a phonetic alteration which is actually more important since alterations are base on sounds of words, but not how the they look. My point is by misspelling castle you pretty much muddle up the mission statement of a learning center and lose a lot of credibility just for the sake of being cutesy.”

Certainly not my best efforts, but I am all excited every time I see I’ve received an e-mail. Sadly they haven’t gotten back to me. There is also the distinct possibility that this place is actually focuses solely playing of and surrounding lore of Mortal Kombat. If that’s the case I withdraw all concerns and applaud their efforts to teach the youth of our nation how to execute Fatalities.

"Our showers looked like a hate crime"

Le Tour

2009-07-03T22:37:00.000-07:00

For three weeks in July I'm in pure sporting heaven. I love everything about the Tour de France. It is, without a doubt, my favorite sporting event followed closely by the World Cup and then the NBA playoffs. This year's Tour is shaping up to be fairly interesting and I thought I'd take the time to try and explain why you should pay attention. I plan on being up at 5:30 a.m. or early for the live feeds this year. Hello sleep deprivation!

Story One: Team Astana

Astana features three guys that can win the Tour. If Alberto Contador, Lance Armstrong, or Levi Liepiemer, don't outright win the Tour Astana will be sorely disappointed, and the whole cycling world would be fairly shocked. Contador is who the team will be riding in support of as he's the team leader. To briefly explain, while each team is comprised of 9 members realistically only one memeber of that team can win the whole thing. The other 8 members sole job is to protect their leader, shield him from the wind, run to and from the team car for water and food, do anything possible to give his leader a shot at the podium at the end of the whole thing. The thing with Astana is they have three guys that could conceivably win, four if you consider Kloden a threat, which I do. While right now the team is saying Contador is their leader and everyone, including a certain 7-time champion, says they are riding in support of Contador that can all quickly change. What if Contador has a bad time trial, or falters in the mountains? What if Lance goes super human and is minutes ahead of Contador in the second week? Are we really to expect them to keep towing this line that Contador is the leader if Lance or Levi is riding better? Contador is young, and he's been put off by Lance coming back to Astana. Tensions right now seem low, a week into the race that could all change. This is the story to watch in the Tour and it should be endlessly fascinating. Oh, and please do not kid yourself into thinking Lance cannot win an 8th tour at the age of 37. The dude came out of a three year retirement to place 12th the Giro last month. Some riders ride all their lives and don't finish in the top 20. He can still ride.

Story Two: The Field

Can any other team really compete with Astana? Yes, and here's who to watch amongst the rest of the field. Cadel Evans of Silence-Lotto. He's shown this year he isn't the passive rider he has been in the past is ready to match any and all attacks in the mountains. Factor in his usual excellent time trailing abilities and he's a threat for the podium. The Brothers Schleck from Saxo-Bank both young and can climb, but I'd say they are more likely to finish in the top 10 not the top 3. Last year's winner Carlos Sastre from Cervelo Test Team. I hope he finishes in the top 3 simply because he rides the bike I covet the most, and the guy is a pure climber who always loses time in the time trials, but makes up for it in the mountains. Finally there is the big Russian Denis Menchov who's a personal favorite riding on Robobank. He certainly looked good in winning he Giro last month. finally there is the other American hope Christian Vandevelde who rides for Garmin-Slipstream. He suprised many last year as a legit podium threat but that was in a vacuum since there was no Astana last year which meant a lot of teams had members finishing higher than can be expected. Still, I'm going to say atop the podium it will be an Astana member.

Story Three: The Sprinters

Who wins more stages Mark Cavendish or Oscar Freire? Really we should all be pulling for Cavendish for a variety of reasons. First, his team is sponsered by Oregon's own Columbia Sportswear, they better they do the better our local economy does. I'm not sure if that's totally true, but it sounds good. Plus Cavendish is young, 24, and brash. The old guard hates him for being a cocky little prick, but the man gets results. He won a record 4 stages last year before dropping out to train for what was ultimately a very disappointing Olympics for him. Friere, Hoshvod, and the newly reinstated Boonen (the Belgian superstar whose Tour participation was very much up in the air because the kid likes the nose candy) should all compete for what could be the most tightly contested points race in some time.

Story Four: The Route

The second to last day is not an individual time trial like most years where for the leader to maintain his yellow jersey simply has to post a decent not great time trial. No, the second to last day is a brutal day of climbing featuring a beyond category climb Mont Ventoux (21.2 km (13 miles) at a total elevation of 1912 m (6273 feet)). What this means is the Tour could still be very much up in the air on the second to last day of racing. In fact nothing could be settled going into the final week as uncharacteristically has three (1, 2, 3) mountain stages, all of which may shatter the peleton leaving the fittest five or six guys to duke it out alone over the climbs without the help of their teammates. The route may make for the most exciting Tour in years.

Since I know at this point eyes have very much glazed over I'll just stop as those are the big four stories I could think of. As the Tour progresses I'll post an update here and there about things to pay attention to.

Predictions:

Yellow Jersey: Alberto Contador
2nd: Cadel Evans
3rd: Denis Menchov
Lance: 10th

Polka Dots: Sastre

Green: Cavendish

Over/under of how many riders will be booted for failing a test: 4 and I'll take the under.

If you want to follow the action daily here's your best web resource.

Hairy Blowy

2009-07-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

At 10:30 I swung my leg over my bike and began what I had penciled in as a 6 hour journey to Gearhart from my home in NE Portland for Paul and Mel’s wedding. I reached the ocean at 4:24 p.m. wind whipped and exhausted. Factoring out the half hour of stoppage time this put my actual time at roughly five and a half hours for a pace of about 16 miles an hour. But to limit the ride to just those few sentences would do no justice to the journey.

Musical selections for the ride to the beach:

Metallica – Master of Puppets
Iron Maiden – Somewhere in Time
NIN – The Fragile
The Offspring – Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace
Orphaned Land – Marbool.

Honestly I mishandled the music selection for the ride there, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

I reached North Plains about an hour and half later. I knew the ride was going to be a little rougher than anticipated when I, for that hour and half, battled a hard head wind. I stopped for a moment to eat a Clifbar and communicate with Ash that of all the things I forgot to pack with me was my wallet. This was troubling for two reasons. Had I wanted to buy anything along the way either food or water that option was now gone, and also should I get hit I had no ID on me. The latter being a little more troubling. It was when I was talking to Ash my gut rumbled and I became very worried that a poop was imminent. I weighed my options for a bit and the pressed onward to 26W.

Having ridden a bike in traffic for close to 9 years at this point I’m pretty used to it. I don’t get fazed easily by cars passing me. I will however admit that 26W when it is still four lanes wide is a little intimidating. I’m unsure why, as I was riding on 26 at this four lane wide point I felt the need to compose a text message to the effect that not getting hit is my number one goal. While doing so I felt it would have been very fitting that I would get hit at that moment. Clearly, I didn’t.

Just a comment about mile markers. They really don’t need to be there every mile. It is a little maddening to tick off the mile one by one on a ride that is 90 miles long.

Finally after being battered by the wind for two hours I approached the first climb on 26. It was beyond fun. There are a few things to note about 26W that from a car perspective you just don’t get. The 1000 foot elevation mark is the designated spot for throwing away Christmas trees.

The tunnel that is at mile markers 41 is terrifying while on a bike. My exact thought was, here’s where I die, in this fucking tunnel.

Shortly after the tunnel I passed a roll of toilet paper. I took two more pedal strokes before slamming on the brakes, dismounted from the bike, and picked up the TP. What went through my head was “this toilet paper is a like a gift from the heavens!” The rumbling in my gut never fully abated all trip. Any time I took in water I got a cramp, and any time I ate I felt like I was about to shit myself. As far as comfort level on the trip to the coast I’d say it was low.

For about an hour before finally hitting what would be my lunch stop of the day I grew despondent. I came to the conclusion that the ride to the beach along this route was a poor decision. I began to have serious doubts if I’d make it or not. I also hadn’t really studied the trip as much as I should have and was unsure how much more climbing was left. As far as I was concerned I was not even half way done with this ride. My water was running low which was another concern. In short, mentally I was done with this ride.

I finally hit this amazing fresh water drinking pull out off the side of the road and solved my water problems. Then a mile later was a rest area where I decided to take a 20 minute lunch break. I consumed one very soggy sandwich and stretched out my muscles. Things began to partially look up until I saw the sign that told me that Seaside was still 35 miles away. What? 35 miles? How is that even fair? What was even worse is a monument at the rest area let me know that the frightening tunnel that I thought would be the end of me was only 12 miles from where I was. I hung my head and imagined another 2.5 hours on the bike and begrudgingly commenced my journey.

Shortly after starting again Nine Inch Nails’ the Fragile finally ended, and as if by magic my mood shifted. I passed a sign that said Seaside was only 25 miles (I’m still confused by how the two signs could be off by 10 miles) and things began to look up. The lesson I learned here is never, and I mean never, listen to Nine Inch Nails if one wants to foster a feeling of good spirits.

I finished my climbing and began what should have been an easy 14 miles to Gearhart except the wind, that bastard, was whipping hard on the coast.

After I finally reached Gearhart I sent some communications to various people and proceeded, as planned, to jump in the ocean. I instantly regretted doing so. With no towel to dry off with, I was actually cold for the 3 hours it would take for everyone else to arrive and I could take what was a life restoring shower.

How does one kill 3 hours in Gearhart while cold, with no money, and no where to go? Well what I did was find a bench located in the sun and slightly shielded from the wind that was located in downtown and shivered. I did learn a lot while on that bench. I learned that Lauren would be attending the University of Arizona, she would be studying psychology, in a week she would be going to Maine, and that she has been bored for a the full month she’s been in town. I learned that Matt Miller was having a party that night, and that the youth of Gearhart bonfire. You’ll note that here bonfire is a verb. The lady responsible for watering the plants in the potters drives a green Tacoma. That no one bothers to lock up their bikes when they go into a place of business. The grocery store closes at 7:00 p.m. and the employees then leave at like 7:07. Not so much town related, but I learned that I have no patience for shit fantasy written by Dave Eddings.

The next day was the wedding and reception. I’d be not an asshole if I didn’t relay some of the events from the reception.

First the food was fantastic, truly commendable food. After eating came the fun and dancing portion of the night. I was having a great time dancing up until a point and then my dancing fun was ruined. Generally speaking weddings make people a little odd. By odd I mean desperate. There they see an image of true happiness and if that is missing in their life they want it, and they want it right then. Truthfully this put me in a funk, which also sort of dictated how I acted the rest of the night. Now while I was in a funk that I was trying to dance my way out of another woman at the reception was manifesting her desperation in the somewhat predictable I-must-hook-up-with someone-here variety. This meant that as the night progressed I was simply unable to even step foot on the dance floor without her approaching me and trying to dance with me. Let’s be clear I dance with no one, I am a man alone on the floor. She would not leave me alone. So what does one do? Well I went with two tact’s. One was to turn my back on her and dance away. This was surprisingly ineffective as she just followed me where I went. Tact two was, whereas, I generally tried and failed to control my farts this evening, when around her I let fly. Yes, totally true I attempted to gas her away from me. That also didn’t work. Also, seeing that logic typed in text makes me feel odd.

At one point she approached me from the side. I didn’t make eye contact, but I dropped my head, audibly said “oh gosh,” and then walked away to get a beer I didn’t want. I took a sip of the beer, put it down on a table, and then walked outside. There was nothing more I could do to tell this woman I wasn’t interested. She eventually moved on to another guy after I did some quick spin moves at the end of the night.

About my gas. I would like to humbly apologize to all at the reception. I was, as I say, blowing it out that night. I’m unsure why this was, but I had it bad from about 2 in the afternoon until 1 a.m. or so. All attempts to hold it in where foiled by the vigorous rump shaking I was doing on the dance floor. I did attempt to leave the dance floor, but often didn’t make it. I’m not saying every fart was my doing, but I’ll say that 90% of them were me. Again, a thousand apologies.

As the night wound down Ash demonstrated his true Jew powers by boxing up an entire meat and cheese spread into one take home box.
Perhaps the less the said about the post reception bonfire the better. I’m going to just posit that some of us made some choices they wouldn’t have normally made had they not been drinking since 6 in the afternoon. Not, me, I was in bed, terrified of my drunken roommates at 2:30.

By 10:40 a.m. the next day I was back on my bike and pedaling.

Musical selections for the ride home:

Avantasia – The Scarecrow
Foreigner – 4
Hiberia – The Skull Collectors
Running Wild – Dead Hand Inn
Slough Feg – Ape Uprising
Sirenia – 13th floor

Not a downbeat album in the bunch. I learned from the NIN mistake two days pervious.

The ride home was mostly unexceptional. I did find a super sweet Strom Trooper action figure which is now proudly displayed in amongst my bobble heads as a memento from trip. The weather was perfect. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. I have some really terrific tan lines from my time spent in the sun. I made it home in a little under 5 hours, but I’ll just put it at 5 hours even. It was about an 18 mile an hour pace home, such are the joys of a tailwind and my desire to get back to home.

In all the weekend was everything I wanted it to be. I finally was able to check off riding to and from the beach from my list of life goals. Plus I made great time and honestly my legs never once felt like they were overmatched for the ride. Now how my taint region felt for most of the ride is another story.

Happy Father's Day

2009-06-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

Today is Father's Day. I did not get my own father a single thing, not even a card. I had every intention to get him a card, but then forgot about it when I was doing my shopping. My dad was not offended in the slightest by this because he told me he didn't want anything, and he knows my stance on cards. The fact he didn't expect anything actually speaks as testament to my dad. He knows that currently I'm living paycheck to paycheck. He knows I'm trying to save money so really by him excusing me from spending money on him, when really he does deserve it, exemplifies many traits of my father that I look up to.

In short, my dad is, has been, and always will be a fantastic father. I really couldn't ask for anything more from him, if anything, he's done too much for me. When I had to move and had no money for first and last month's rent plus deposit he provided it. When my car broke down (semi his fault, okay not even close) he helped me out then too. Last year when my bike frame cracked and I called him up in near tears he took me around the next day frame hunting and then graciously paid for the frame. These examples don't just mean to highlight the fact that he's helped me out financially throughout the years, but that whenever asked he's there to help me. He's given me enduring support growing up; he's been the very definition of a good, involved father; like a real life Danny Tanner.

Some scenes that I think about when I think of my dad:

Him and I grocery shopping on Saturday mornings at what I believe was WinCo that had this insane soda dispensing wall. He always let me choose the sodas for the week. He also during one of these trips corrected me and told me that I'm never to say "son of a bitch," but rather, "son of a gun" will do just as well. I still never to this day say "son of a bitch" it is always "son of a gun."

When I would awake in the middle of the night with intense abominable cramping and then hellacious diarrhea he would sit up with me in his underwear on the edge of the tub for hours trying console me. There really isn't much you can do when your kid is shitting for 3 hours, but he was there trying to make things better.

He came to every soccer game he could make it to. He never once yelled at me, the coach, or anyone. He stood there silently and watched the action. The one time he talked to me while a game was in progress was when I had been subbed out and he saw me sitting on the sideline. He took me aside and said that sitting was no way to make it look like I wanted back in the game and that I should stand and follow the coach around. I did so for very single game from there on, I played a lot more because of it.

I puked up Tang in the back of his van. He was mad for like three seconds.

He never once talked down to me or altered his word choice. If I didn't understand I had to ask what a word meant. This probably helped me develop the 6th grade vocabulary I currently enjoy, much better than the 2nd grade one I would have had otherwise.

I could go on, but does anyone else really want to read dumb vignettes from my childhood? Do I want to make this 10,000 words when a new epside of Harpers Island is waiting to be watched? I'll just finish this off by saying that while it hasn't always been fun and games, he is a hardass after all and I was a royal pain in the ass for a long, long time, I couldn't ask for more or better from him. If I can be like 80% of the father he was to me, my kid will be the luckiest kid in the world because I truly feel like the luckiest kid in the world having my father be my father.

Shoot, now I better do one of these more my mom otherwise she's going to be mad at me. Hey, Mother's Day is only like 11 months from now.

View From A Bike 5

2009-06-12T17:10:00.001-07:00

A lot hills in and around Portland are great fun to descend and feel much like a rollercoaster complete with that stomach dropping out of your body sensation. I have learned however that should I get that stomach dropping from my body feeling it means I’ve misjudged a turn and some emergency braking is needed less I want to wind up off the road and in pain.

When Sneaky Means Not Sneaky At All

2009-06-12T13:54:00.001-07:00

Some you may know I have a little napping/reading room that I take my lunch in daily. It has a couch and is really quite comfy. I can spend half my lunch reading and the other half sleeping. The downside is that all that separates my little sanctuary from the corridor where people come and go from the elevator lobby and into their office area is a door, and the door does almost nothing to block out sounds. I can hear everything, doors opening, doors closing, people drinking from the fountain, people talking on cell phones, anything that happens in that hallway as clear as if I were standing in it. This generally relates to a woman who has private conversations on her cell directly across from the door. This makes sense because she’s actually as far away from her office as possible and out of sight from her employers. I loathe this woman. She has a super irritating laugh, and her conversations are generally banal. I however did really understand how stupid she was until yesterday.

I was sleeping, very much passed out and in a happy spot when her voice awakened me. I tried to ignore her and fall back asleep but her conversation was too loud, and in this cases almost interesting enough that I laid on my back and passed judgment on her character. Now to be totally clear I feel for this woman because it became totally apparent she was talking to her friend about the demise of her marriage. Something that made a pervious conversation I had overheard from her make a ton of sense. In short, a few weeks ago I heard her talking to man. The man was talking loud enough I could almost hear his end of the conversation as well. I could however pick up the tone which is to say it was short and angry. Anyway, back to the conversation from yesterday. I’ll just excerpt out the two parts that really made me just shake my head.

“He’s so, sneaky, so, so, so sneaky, like get this, he has all these numbers in his phone that I don’t recognize and have no name attached to them. And the text messages from him say things like ‘meet me for drinks tonight?’ See he’s so sneak, so sneaky.”

“Oh another sneaky thing he did, see he’s sneaky, is he opened another bank account, a separate from the joint one, so I can’t see his spending. He’s so sneaky, so sneaky; do you see what I’m saying?”

At one point during this I said out loud “are you fucking kidding me, you’re a fucking idiot.” Okay harsh words I know, but really does she not know what the word sneaky means? Because based on those two snippets of conversation I’d say she thinks sneaky means something like blatantly obvious. Sneaky would be like having a whole secondary phone that was only kept at work or on the person and never, ever, ever left out for someone to grab and check messages. Sneaky would be opening a bank account and having all the mail directed work or another, non-home location, and in no way having it found out by your spouse who you’re treating so poorly it’s pretty clear you want a divorce. At least she correctly concluded that the asshole is cheating on her.

Another fun thing happened was it was midway through this conversation that I needed to pee. Thing was I didn’t want to pop out of the room and have her know I had been in there the whole time. On the other hand I really didn’t care. Still I held it and happily her friend seemed to have cut her off, probably because she was sick of being made dumber from having to participate in the conversation.

Now do I feel bad I overheard all this? Not really, there really isn’t much I could have done. I didn’t actively seek that out it just happened. I just wish she’d, I dunno go down a floor. I don’t need to hear about her failing marriage while I’m trying to sleep.

Fru-it

2009-06-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

With my third bachelor party well enough behind me that I’m no longer feeling its effects I figured a rough sketch might be fun. This one was probably the most successful in terms of a lack of mental anguish as it did not feature a failed one night stand, or night terrors so complete I was felt compelled to get in my car and drive it into a river. Both totally true happenings from the previous two bachelor parties.

Places I peed, a list:

Off the top of the roof which took some advance climbing.

In a sand bunker of a golf course.

Into a water bottle in the closet where I was sleeping because I was concerned that using the toilet and the subsequent flushing would wake up Paul. Never mind that Paul at this juncture was absolutely passed out to the world and had a B-52 taken off in that room he still probably would not have been prodded awake. I only sort of remember doing this as I was both pretty much asleep and still drunk. Regardless I spilled not a drop.

While I’m discussing bodily functions Theo would like me to point out that “Bend/Sunriver are the Vortices for Bowel Movements.” He says this because while there bad things happened to all our bowels. For instance Theo counted himself at 6 poops in 2.5 days which is a tad excessive. Les arrived and spent the next 3 hours out of 6 in the bathroom. The amount of pooping was so much that bets were made. On the other hand I, who has very regular bowels, didn’t poop once in the three days I was there and had to wait until Monday before even farting. That’s right I didn’t fart from Friday until Monday. Monday was rough. It is also quite evident that 11 dudes in a house drinking will lead to the whole place smelling like farts. In Dougie and Theo’s room which comprised of two beds and maybe five feet of floor space between the two smelled so bad on Saturday morning from farts that I feared for both of their lives as I felt like there was lack of oxygen for breathing. I weighed myself on Monday morning and was up 3.7 pounds. I feel like most of that was poop that was just incubating in my colon. Bad things happen in Sunriver.

I ate the best pancakes of my life.

I ate some of the worst pancakes of my life.

I will pretty much refuse to eat with a group of people of more than 5 at sushi place ever again. I feel like paying 41 dollars and getting one roll and two pieces of tuna isn’t worth my money. Most of what I ordered errantly eaten. This is partly my fault, but still, never again.

The two coolest things I saw where Chris Horner on a training ride. Who’s he? Oh just a pro cyclist for Astana, the same team as Tour de France favorite Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong. The other was Point Break which I had somehow never seen before.

I pulled the trigger twice. Once on Saturday morning as the car ride into Bend, mixed with the sludgiest coffee I’ve ever made, and the previous night’s debauchery made me so nauseous I had but one option. The other time being Saturday evening when I ate too much and again felt nauseous. I believe Theo was the only other one to pull the trigger. In any event I win this category.

I played maybe the best three basketball games of my life. I expect to never do that again.

I did ride a bike, twice. The second time involved me riding on the fairway of the golf course that was next to our house. It was either that our try and figure out how to get unlost from where we were. I think we made the right choice.

To briefly describe the house. Think of the place that Patrick Bateman would have constructed as a vacation home to murder hookers. The place was totally built when coke was all the craze. The place was white with accents of white and there were giant mirrors where a plain wall would have worked just fine.

Les once again made some of the best desserts I’ve had. His frosting was consumed by me via spoon on a number of occasions.

I think that sums up my experience, it was fun, if not a little boring for stretches. And hey, at least I didn’t pee myself like a certain member of the party.

Boring Name Fun Results

2009-05-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

Having the name Mark Walsh is sort of fun. It is just common enough that a lot stuff that isn't meant for me is still sent to my gmail account. There is a scholarly Mark Walsh that signs up for all sorts of seminars, I know because I get all the confirmation e-mails. Another Mark Walsh travels a lot. There's one Mark Walsh that has a hauling company. I get his monthly bill that he's supposed to remit by the end of the month. One Mark Walsh plays bass trombone and is set to play in the Old Dutch's 350th Anniversary. I'm also on two e-mail lists for what I gather are a bunch of right-wing republicans from Kentucky and they love their bluegrass. The one list is about bluegrass and their former band Locoweed. The other is for all their Republican shit and then they insult one another until the get bored and then move on to the next topic. I get wrong e-mails daily. I never respond, well almost never. This one was too good to leave alone.

from Karl Dolan
to Mark Walsh
date Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 12:29 a.m.
subject i don't normally do this...

but one good turn deserves another i guess?!

you gotta send me one in return now...

k

Um, what he meant by not normally doing this is sending pictures of his penis to other people. Yes, I have a picture of Karl's penis. I'm opting to not post it since at some point I may want to look at this at work. Also, I think my dear mother reads this which I think is reason enough really.

from Mark Walsh
to Karl Dolan
date Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 12:52 a.m.
subject Re: i don't normally do this...

Hey Karl!

You what don't normally send pictures of your dick, while quite nice, to total and straight strangers? Well yeah, I can see why you wouldn't normally do that, but hey I guess you got to go out on a limb every once and awhile. I applaud your forthright attitude and your dick. It looks well maintained, and large enough to fill me up if that were my thing. I'll hold on to this picture forever as a keepsake and since I'm not really interested sending you a picture of my dick because really this one you sent me was unsolicited and I don't see why I should be held to an end of a bargain I didn't ask for, here's a picture of a cat's penis with barbs, or maybe spines. I'm unsure what that means, but enjoy all the same.

Thanks!
Mark

And in this case I will post the picture because it still confuses me.

Yeah, what is that? The picture file name is ap_cat_penis_spines.jpg.

from Karl Dolan
to Mark Walsh
date Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 1:06 a.m.
subject RE: i don't normally do this...

how strange. you keep hold of it as long as want mark. i've been speaking to you for the past week now and been nothing other than friendly and open towards you, but if i'm being honest it seems like you just want to get one up on me? maybe i'm wrong but you read back over your last email and try to see what i'm saying... i'm a very very shy/private guy but i've been far more open with you than i have with other fellas. i'm not sayin that's any big deal but you should be gentle with that rather than play oneupmanship...

from Mark Walsh
to Karl Dolan
date Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 1:53 a.m.
subject Re: i don't normally do this...

Oh Karl,

See the problem stems form a simple misunderstanding. I believe gmail has mis-delivered your initial e-mail to the wrong Mark Walsh. I'm actually in Portland Oregon, and I don't remember corresponding with you this past week. I have a new theory that I may be an insominac and doing all sorts of odd things when I think I'm asleep ala Fight Club only instead of being cool I'm actually sort of lame, but in any case I really feel like I'd remember cooresponding with someone that would eventually lead to that person sending me a picture of thier penis. This is my round about way of actually apologizing. I was out to have some fun and I now realize having fun at another expense is rarely a good idea, but you can't fault me right? I mean, you did send me a picture of your dong.

Best Regards,
Mark

"I'm going to stay at the Tillicum 'til I cum"

Summer Missions

2009-05-30T00:53:00.000-07:00

As I've consumed two Diet Rockstars and despite the lack of sleep I accrued during the previous night I'm very much wide awake and a little stir crazy. Prior to turning off the TV (which currently tuned to VH1's Metal Mania) and trying to read until I fall asleep I figured it would be a good time to come up with some missions for the summer. According to the Internets Fall is set to begin this year on September 22 at exactly 5:18 p.m. and thus that is how long I have to complete the following:

1. Read and finish Against the Day, Mason & Dixon, and the yet to be released Inherant Vice. I might as well call this the summer of Pynchon. This mission I think I have with ease.

2. Perform 200 consecutive sit-ups.

3. Perform 100 consecutive push-ups this time with my push up bars.

4. Complete this ride on 06.26.09 and then the reverse of it on 06.28.09.

5. Turn the furniture graveyard (the garage) back into an actual garage. This means eliminating two couches and maybe a love seat, plus the two airline chairs I for some reason picked up off the side of the road after a Blazer game.

6. Keep my graden alive and well through the summer.

7. Drop 8-10 pounds.

I'm sure I can think of a few more, I feel like that's a good start.

View From A Bike 4

2009-05-29T14:22:00.001-07:00

Underwear, squirrel, garter snake, mole, all dead and or used.

Hmm...

2009-05-29T14:21:00.001-07:00

I sometimes wonder if the sole reason why men are supposed to let women proceed before them through doorways or into elevators is so that they may look at their asses. Just something to consider, it seems kind of oppressive either way.

Ocean Spray

2009-05-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve been making trips to Oregon Food Bank’s Volunteer Action Center on Tuesday nights after work for nearly a year now. That is, as my schedule allows. Which really means that I’m there if the Blazers are not playing. Anyway, I show up weekly, dawn an orange vest being as I am a part of special teams, and I move things around for 2.5 hours. There are a total of three of us, myself included, that make up special teams week in and week out. There are also the rotating cast of people that volunteer for special teams, but most of them can’t even follow a simple stack pattern and make my life harder. The other two regulars would be Enoch and Jill. Enoch is Enoch, a nice, genial man that just wants help. Jill is still in high school, writes for the school paper, and imagine is a bit of an overachiever. But still, shows up weekly because she wants to help. My own motivations are not clear to me.

Jill may or may not have a crush on me. She will endlessly flick me shit for the entire time I’m there. On Tuesday we were doing potatoes. Some people were putting potatoes into bags with a goal of making each bag weigh an exact five pounds. Special teams went around collecting these bags and dropping them off into a crate. I stood at the crate and carefully arranged the potatoes for maximum weight. Think it doesn’t matter? A crate of potatoes not stacked carefully weighed 1000 pounds. One I stacked weighed between 1157 pounds to 1210, or as Enoch would say a 16 to 21 percent improvement. Regardless, Jill felt the need to poke fun of my OCD compulsion. After about five of these comments I said “you think this is OCD you should see my bedroom.” I thought it an innocent comment; my room is always looking sharp. Then I saw her eyes widen and I realized I had just inadvertently invited an 18 year-old to come check out my bedroom. I hastened to add “or my kitchen, or living room, or backyard” after I realized my gaff. I don’t think it helped.

In totally unrelated news I took a pooper two days ago that smelled exactly like the beach. Okay, not the beach smell you think of when you exit the car for the first time and take a deep breach of ocean air. My poop smelled liked the area of the beach by the huge sewer pipes that water flows from and out into the ocean. Still, for a poop I think that’s pretty good and way better than what normally emanates from that area.

Do. You. Tap. Out?

View From A Bike 3

2009-05-28T22:41:00.000-07:00

Today as I crossed the Hawthorne Bridge I noticed that the man in front of me also on a bike had a tramp stamp. This, being a man, really caught my eye. The stamp was of a broccoli stalk and floret. I truthfully do not know how I feel about it.

View From A Bike 2

2009-05-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

There is a really great moment when descending down a hill at a fast enough speed that spinning the pedals, even in the highest gear, will not make me go any faster and I realize regardless of my reaction time if the car in front of my stops abruptly there’s pretty much nothing I can do. Accepting that notion is very freeing in a totally fucked up way.

View From A Bike 1

2009-05-22T14:33:00.001-07:00

On the way to work there is a community garden. Most of the garden is fenced off but there is one tiny little plot unfenced nearest the sidewalk that has maybe 5 sad looking plants. I saw a man walking past these sad looking plants take one step beyond them and then, with his rear foot still planted, take a step back and water one plant with the remains of his Joose at 8:30 in the morning.

W4M

2009-05-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

I’m an asshole; just wait for it.

Realizing that my lifestyle of solitary riding, war mongering on the root system in my backyard, and my general shunning of going out in public unless totally necessary it has occurred to me, that given all that, meeting (a) girl(s) is tough. To feel like I’m making minimal effort I spend some time looking at the personals, the W4M ads, on Craigslist. Don’t judge. Ok, judge, that’s fine too. Anyway, I’m becoming increasingly creeped out by these ads and I now feel like the whole site is just slimy. Yeah, not the most original of conclusions so no need to point that out to me. One of the main problems I think is that it would run counter to conclude that attractive, smart, fit girls, the ones I’m attracted to, would even need the internet so I guess that’s problem number one. The rest I will delineate before getting to the actual reason for this blog, which, to give a spoiler, is about my most recent Craigslist misadventure.

Problems with most ads posted by women for men that I take issue with:

1. They often feel like English conventions (grammar and spelling) are optional and or just not necessary.
2. They have kids.
3. A car seems to be a main requirement for dating.

The first two are sort of self-explanatory. Right, so if I’m going to present myself to a bunch of strangers in an effort to garner enough attention wouldn’t I put myself in the best possible light? Yes, I would. And if in this case the best way to do that is to write clearly and concisely. To put those pesky punctuation marks there they belong as well as capitalizing those pesky nouns that require capitalization. Some girls opt not to, and I don’t think I’m even missing all that much when I just hit the back button and don’t read the rest.

Any mention of a kid and I’m gone. Maybe when I’m still alone at 37 I’ll let the filter go away but until then, sorry, no kids. It would take an exception but sadly that exception is not to be made for someone on Craigslist. This due mainly because of the aforementioned slimy feeling I get when I read ads.

Number three, sigh, number three. Okay I certainly do get it. A car is a status symbol. It says “hey, look at me my life is together enough I can afford insurance, gas, and the potential car payments to keep the repo man at bay!” Which makes sense, but at the same time it can be totally misleading. I mean almost everyone drives a car right? That would mean losers, the type this filter is in place to filter out, is actually actively failing. To be totally fair the car thing also seems to be in a sentence that also lists, stable job, and a direction in life. It’s like the trinity of potential dating stability. Job, car, direction in life. Find me an ad that has just job, and direction in life but leaves out the car and I’ll be genuinely surprised.

These three things I look for excludes about 99% of the ads I look at. Which isn’t to say 99% of all the ads available. Heck, I’m so selective I only click on like a third of the ads posted.

But anyway onwards to the real main point of this blog. Last week I found an ad tailored to me. The main point was “hey I’m bored at work, e-mail me and we can see where things go.” This was more or less perfect as I was also bored at work, but also it was free and I like e-mailing people. I responded and for about 4 hours we exchanged e-mails. At the end of the day she suggested we text that evening. By then it was pretty clear that my level of charm and wit via my written words had made her a tad smitten. I was game and thus we texted throughout the evening before I finally hinted that perhaps she stop so I could watch LOST in peace.

The next day I decided to go for my litmus test to gauge interests and, ahem, general intellect. If even do this I pretty much already have my answer. I sent her an e-mail pretty much outlining my top 10 albums, movies, and books. That would look like this:

Albums (I should warn you I’m an unrepentant metal head, as evidenced by the list)
1. Master of Puppets – Metallica
2. Angel Dust – Faith No More
3. Aenima – Tool
4. Reign In Blood - Slayer
5. Vulgar Displays of Power - Pantera
6. The City is Alive Tonight - Dog Fashion Disco
7. Oceanic - ISIS
8. The Blackening – Machine Head
9. Paranoid – Black Sabbath
10. Filfosem - Burzum

Movies
1. 12 Monkeys
2. Brazil
3. Die Hard
4. Children of Men
5. Wall-E
6. There Will Be Blood
7. Alien
8. Superbad
9. Serenity
10. Jaws

Books
1. Infinite Jest – Wallace
2. Sometimes a Great Notion – Kesey
3. The Brothers K – Duncan
4. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Chabon
5. The Count of Monte Cristo – Dumas
6. Catch 22 – Heller
7. Gravity’s Rainbow – Pynchon
8. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Rowling
9. Suttree – MaCarthy
10. Invisible Man – Ellison

Now I should be clear. I could not give a fuck all what someone likes for music of movie tastes. My mindset is that albums take up about an hour of your and movies maybe two hours or a little more. I’m certainly not spending a lot of time invested in those two mediums. I think someone could make some strong arguments that my favorite movies are shit and I’d be okay with that. They could also say my music choices are puerile overaggressive music for mentally stunted teenagers. Sure, I’d probably agree. The real issue comes with the books list. A person may tell me they think Infinite Jest or any of the other books on my list are crap, but I know that the time I’ve spent with them has enriched my life. I’m not making my point very clear. Essentially, if you’re going to read books most of the time shouldn’t you challenge yourself and read something that makes you think and engages your brain?

Her response:
my taste varies..

Albums - how about I give albums and artists because I'm horrible with album and song names... (Edit: it appears that albums and artists she just meant artists)
1. Billy Joel
2. Elton John
3. Alice Smith
4. Aerosmith
5. Queens of the Stone Age
6. The Beatles
7. Weezer
8. Rooney
9. lily Allen
10. FOB

Movies
1. SpaceBalls
2. Super Troopers
3. Anchorman
4. Texas Chain Saw 1 and 2
5. The Quiet Man
6. Monsoon Wedding
7. Hamlet 2
8. Cool Hand Luke
9. When Harry Met Sally
10. To Wong Fu

Books
1. Angels and Demons
2. Twilight Series
3. House of Night Series
4. Congo
5. Chocolat
6. The Virgin of flames
7.
8
9
10

Okay remember I don’t care about the music or the movies, but seriously Aerosmith? No, I’ll stay on track I promise. Look at the book list. Angels and Demons number one? Sigh, the Twilight Series? Not only am I confident in saying those books are shit, but the whole series? Come on, I didn’t put down the Harry Potter series; I limited myself to the best book in that series in my opinion. House of the Night, again the series, is another vampire centric story. Vampires have never been cool, not once. Then, what, Congo at number four? When I look at that I just shake my head in a disapproving motion. I’ll not even make mention of the fact that she couldn’t even flush out the rest of the top 10. What like putting down The Da Vinci Code, The Kite Runner, Jurassic Park, and Sphere, just to guess, would have been too much thought and work? I will say this. I do respect her honesty. She could have looked on Amazon, seen my books were a little more intense than Angels and Demons and changed course. She didn’t she answered honestly which I can appreciated even it mean I then spent 1,500 words making fun of her. And with that I end with what I began with; I’m an asshole, I’m an asshole, I’m an asshole.

…came heavenwide multicolored flashes of light, which only the incurably complacent tried to explain away as heat lightening.

Zack and Wiki Make a Porno.

2009-05-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

On centuries.

I’ve ridden my bike in upwards of 100 miles in one day on four separate occasions. The cycling nomenclature for such an event (where as feat feels a little to much like grandstanding) is called a century. Tomorrow I will complete number 5 as I bike from Hillsboro to Pacific City for the American Lung Association’s Reach the Beach. I make no illusions that a century is in anyway tougher than running a marathon. Marathons, yes, are only about a quarter of the length, but in terms of total effort the marathon trumps a century. For example there will be times tomorrow when I will coast, if there is a downhill that extends for a mile or more I will have gained free miles, miles in which I expended almost no energy. Such miles do not exist in a marathon. Also afterwards I will not nearly collapse at the finish line and have to be wrapped in one of those space blankets for reasons that have never been totally clear to me; though they certainly look cool. Some people also like to point out that professional cyclists will ride in upwards of 4 or 5 centuries in a row during the grand tours, whereas few people have the gusto to run more than one marathon after completing one the day before. I would like to point out, if only to further bore you, (I know I don’t post for about two months and the first post back is about cycling again ?!!?) but those that go on the long breaks one day typically do not do so the next day because it is too taxing on the body. A lot of energy is saved simply riding in the peloton where everyone acts air resistance break for everyone else.

For some reason I feel compelled to catalog the previous four centuries for reasons that are totally clear to me.

Century One:
July 2006 Failed Bike Trip Day Two
Neskowin to Eugene
This century has done a fair amount of damage and undercutting to the training efforts of the one I’m about to take. On the first day we rode 96 miles from Astoria to Neskowin. Previous to that day without my 50ish pound trailer the most I had ever ridden was like 50 miles. So my thinking has been, if I could do it then I can do it now, screw training. There were three, well actually four, highlights of this century. One, it was the first one ever and thus a special place is reserved in my heart for it. Two, chomping down on a multi part Indian feast on the sidewalk in Corvallis debating the merits of stopping in Corvallis for the night or pushing on to Eugene. We clearly pushed onwards, sadly our gusto for such things ran out on only our second day. Three, it grew dark and without bike lights we each used our LED headlights as a way for cars to see us on the on the ever darkening road. The key here was I rode in the front with my LED headlight forward, and Paul rode behind with his LED headlight backward, totally safe I assure you. Four, we finally made it to Eugene and naturally busted out some pushups in the parking lot. Naturally I did fewer than Paul, but the idea of doing pushups, at night, in a parking lot after riding a little over 100 miles still makes me smile.

Century Two:
September 2007 Portland Century
Either this century or Century Three are tied for worst times on a bike ever. The Portland Century was just flat out poorly organized and supported. Two things I still remember about this ride. The first was that going into it I really didn’t think there were that many hills. I had previously done the ADA Summit to Surf ride that features a climb up to Timberline Lodge and second lesser climb over Bennett Pass. Those are climbs. The elevation charts for the Portland Century showed like two climbs, neither of which crested 2000 feet. No problem I thought. Nope, I’m an idiot. This one climb, I’m not even sure where it was, absolutely killed me and this was at mile 75 or so. I was flat out dead. My pace was so slow the support vehicle pulled beside me and asked if I needed help. No, no I do not, just let me ride at my slow pace, I’ll make it. Then, and this is critical, never ever, ever, should a century ride end going into a headwind. It just shouldn’t. In this case the Portland Century had about a 10 mile stretch along the Columbia. Do you think it was windy this day? Isn’t it windy every day by a major source of water? And here is where things turned ever so frustrating. I was there fighting the wind and absolutely hating life when a string of 5 riders rode up told me to attach to their rear wheels. I went from 15 MPH to 25 MPH in like four pedal strokes such is the power cyclists working together. This was great, I was going to cruise to finish. After about 5 miles of this I was told to take a pull on the front. I did, I crushed it. The little bit of a rest I got allowed me to far exceed my abilities. I took the longest and probably fastest pull in the front. When my time was done I was to proceed to the back of the line only they took off, my legs, totally fried from my turn up front were just not strong enough to attach myself to the back of the line and I was ditched, headed into the wind, and more tired than when I began. I still fucking hate those anus sores.

Century Three
May 2008
Eugene to Deep Beaverton
Easily the most fun I’ve had doing a long ride. Great company, great support, just a fun time. Again with very little training I crushed out a good ride. The highlight for me was ascending the one lone climb of the ride and putting about a half an hour of time between myself and everyone else. Not that this was a race, but I do like climbing and had a great time.

Century Four
July 2008
Summit to Surf
The previous year should have been my second century but a wildfire closed down the final 25 or so miles of the course so this year was to be my first complete Fire and Ice 100. I have almost no good memories of this ride save for one. Well before I get there I should explain. During the E to DB ride my bike made a really nice clicking sound. Then about a month later I found that my frame had totally cracked down by the bottom bracket. Game over for that bike frame. A mad search for a new frame yielded exactly what I was looking for but as a result I was out of a bike for two weeks. Two weeks that I didn’t ride a bike or even do any real training. I walked to and from work in a grumpy malaise. I got my newly rebuilt bike back a week before Summit to Surf but maybe got in two good rides prior to that Saturday. Anyway, back to the ride. As I began to ascend Mt. Hood towards Timberline the pace was relaxed but a bit fast. I was feeling good and a man in all Duck gear passed me and then heckled two women one of which was in Beaver gear. They said something like “I guess Ducks climb better than Beavers!” to which I mashed down on my pedals and said “nope, Beavers can climb just fine!” and shot the distance between myself and the Duck. I was then on his wheel and finally, after recovering made a move to pass him. I then sat up and lowered the pace a bit knowing that the worse was yet to come. When I passed him I said hello and also noticed he was riding a team issued Fuji bike. I ride a Fuji was well only one that is about four levels below the team issue. My frame is aluminum, his is carbon, and in fact everything on his bike was much nicer than mine. I noted this. He stayed on my back tire most of the way up and made some pleasant conversation. I was annoyed that he made no effort to ride in front. This was particularly true when we curved around to the other side of the mountain and the wind picked up. Nope, he just sat back there conserving energy. With two miles to the top I looked back and him and told him, “nice ride, see you at the top.” I was off. He tried to follow but I out climbed him, not by a lot, but by about 45 seconds. The effort left me feeling like I needed to puke. That was the one lone highlight. Remember how I mentioned the ending of a century should never feature a lot of wind? This was by far the windiest riding I’ve had to fight at the end of the century. I went up a hill faster than I went down it at one point. The whole thing left me so frustrated that I vowed to never ride in Hood River again. My parents can attest to my level of aggravation. I think I slammed my bike in the back of the truck and said “get the fuck out of here!”

Tomorrow I embark on number five. I have, again, not done the prerequisite training but then last year I didn’t ride a bike for two weeks prior. I’m using my past success to dictate my future success. This is probably a recipe for failure. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow. If you feel so inclined click on the link below. All proceeds go to the American Lung Association, though I feel like since it has been close to two months since my last post so the likelihood anyone sees this I suppose is rather small.

Donate!

Time to robot.

Keep Moving Forward

2009-03-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

OK this is an ode to cycling blog. Don’t read it if you aren’t interested with my love for riding, which really should be most of you.

My favorite show of all time is Futurama. One of the best episodes is titled Anthologies of Interest II. The premise is that Professor Farnsworth has a What If Machine that allows anyone to ask What If… and it then shows you the reality if that were the case. It’s a cool concept because I think everyone thinks “what if…” about their lives. In the Futurama episode it is naturally all fun and levity, but the concept, in real life, is often more about regret and missed opportunities. Which leads me to today’s topic and discussion. I’ve been thinking about this very what if for about 3 years now. What if I started bike commuting in high school rather than after college?

This is a thought I often had while riding because a lot of my rides take me near Lincoln. It doesn’t take a huge leap to wonder what things would have been like had I gotten into cycling earlier. I credit the bike with shaping who I am now versus who I was then. In four going on five years of riding my bike I’ve gotten in decent shape, altered by diet drastically, gained confidence I never had before. In short I’m a better person due to cycling.

In high school I was a lazy little slug. I ate a fairly poor diet of foods high in saturated fats and sodium. I’m talking about cooking two Hot Pockets for dinner and then spreading butter atop them so that the salt would stay on the crust rather than cascading off the Hot Pockets and on to the plate. I did this actually with all things heated in the oven, butter and salt on everything! When I was working at Fred Meyer my nightly breaks consisted of three doughnuts and 2% milk. Sure, if there’s a time to eat like that it is in high school, but I still frown when looking back on my poor diet. I was a chubby little kid and that led to a severe lack of confidence.

I will admit that when I first began cycle commuting I took that as permission to eat absolutely anything I wanted. This was not helped by the fact that I quickly became friends with people working at the coffee place in the lobby of my place of employ. I would take home between 6 and 7 doughnuts daily. I would actually eat 3 or so before getting on the bike. I would then polish of the remaining doughnuts after dinner or maybe even for dinner. It took me a while to learn that doughnuts to not make good fuel for rides. Slowly but surely my diet changed hand in hand with what I wanted out of my rides. The more I rode the more I realized what I put in my gullet made a huge difference. A simple thing like keeping hydrated throughout the day now became one of my daily goals. Today my diet ranges from militant and limiting, to cautiously indulgent. There is however no food that enters my mouth without me thinking of the nutritional qualities that I will be getting out of it.

Cycling has also made me mentally healthier. About three weeks ago I was not in a good place. I was pissed and cranky for about two straight weeks. I couldn’t put a finger on the problem but I felt backed up emotionally. On a Saturday evening I biked out to my soccer game and played a decent though far from great game. To get home I had my choice of routes. I could come the way I came and avoid the hill or I could go up and over a moderate hill. Against my better judgment I went up and over the hill. My legs got grooving and I felt great. I was free. As I began to descend down the hill I got a view of Portland in the night. A huge grin overtook my face and I was happy for the first time in weeks. The smile would not be erased for the rest of the ride. I looked like a grinning asshole and I loved every second of it. The ride was cold, it was wet, and none of that mattered.

It was simple; I was not allowing myself to do the one thing I love more than anything else: ride hard. The trek to and from work is boring to say the least (but still the only way I’ll even consider getting to work). To and from my games isn’t much better. Put me in the hills though and things get fun and interesting. My legs begin to groove and I feel like a world killer. It boosts my confidence and I literally feel untouchable and great. I can honestly tell you that I never felt that way in high school.

Those are the two huge contrasting points between myself now and myself in high school. And it is without a doubt simply because I started riding a bike. I suppose this exercise is sort of worthless. All I can state with any certainty is that had I been riding in high school I would have been happier and thinner. The thin part would have been nice because at least Justin couldn’t have called me fat for years on end.

There are a whole lot of other points I could probably make but I’m finding it very hard to put my thoughts into an inchoate order. It is like my love for riding a bike is blurring my ability to construct paragraphs that flow nicely into one another. Plus I’m sure you’re bored at this point so I’ll just move on to two other points of interest.

One!
Starting in 2011 Portland gets it second major league franchise. The Timbers make the jump from USL to MSL. I’m super geeked out about this. I feel like season tickets are in my future.

Two!
How’s this for fiscal responsibility. Guitar Hero: Metallica launches next week and I won’t be buying it. I know weird right? As much as I love Metallica and rhythm games I just can’t justify the expenditure even if the game also features Slayer’s Raining blood.

Three!
If you are so inclined please donate to the ALA as I’ll be riding in their Reach the Beach fundraising ride on May 16th.

'Eructating, Sancho, not Belching,' said Don Quixote

Donations Welcome!

2009-03-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

Hey, I know I never update this like I said I would. I have no excuses. Anyway, if you’re so inclined to donate money to good causes I’m riding in the American Lung Associations Reach the Beach on May 16th. You can donate to the cause here. Any little bit helps.

Tomorrow I do promise a real update with many paragraphs and insights to me as a person. I know you are already all sorts of excited.

And I blew it!

I'll Take Any Colonics You're Offering

2009-02-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

A few things.

I’ve contracted a disease. I’m not sure what this little guy is but I have a normal head cold complete with nuclear green mucous which I can summon at will from my sinuses before depositing in the sink where the white of it, the sink, puts the nuclearness of the snot in high relief. Added to the head cold is my stomach, which mentally I’m referring to as jacked up. I have abominable cramps that refuse to go away. This all started Sunday night and it wasn’t until last night they subsided enough that I got a decent nights rest. Things where at their nadir Tuesday when, while watching the Blazer game, I proceeded to both fart and burp for close to four straight hours. These were deep farts and burps, the types of which seem to be birthed from deep, deep within the digestive system. I was confused and discomforted by them so much that I went to sleep at 9 in the evening. What followed was an awful night of sleep where I was convinced, regardless of what my thermometer was displaying, that I had a fever. Wednesday the pains grew worse and finally I went to the store to purchase some Pepto Bismol in an effort to curb the pain and discomfort. The results were promising and I was hungry for the first time all week. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that I’m slugging Pepto Bismol to deal with an upset stomach at the age of 27, but here I am. I would also like to note, I like the taste of the stuff. I think one of the reasons why the pains still exist is that I haven’t had a meaningful BM in something like three days. How so? Well the moment I feel like I’m getting sick I load up on vitamin C. In this case on Tuesday I consumed an Odwalla Citrus C-Monster and three Emergen-Cs. In sum, in the span of 6 hours I had put in 5000% of the daily recommendation for vitamin C. One of the downsides to excess vitamin C consumption is it really backs up the poop works. I feel like the reason my stomach pains persist is I have some poop I need to release but the gosh darned vitamin C is ruining all that.

I also have concluded that I may have picked up a minor case of Salmonella owing to my near daily consumption of ground turkey. Though I’m unsure if there are minor cases of Salmonella. It would certainly account for some of my symptoms. I’m also now looking into ulcers, as fun as that sounds. Aspects of an ulcer also make sense, but really I can’t conclude anything until I get that meaningful BM.

On to another topic, I’m not sure if this happens to other people as much as it happens to me, but I seem to be confused for employees at various retails stores almost every time I’m in one. I’m asked where the cards are located in Borders, where one can find the shoes in Nordstrom Rack, where the world music is at Everyday Music. I’m not sure why this is; I can’t really figure it out. I highly doubt it is because I walk around with an air of competency at all times because I’m fairly sure that just isn’t the case. I have learned that correcting someone only adds to the awkwardness of the situation and that instead I just direct them roughly where their query can be located.

Finally, I got a fairly bizarre comment on my blog titles Cat Shits and Annelids. The blog where I theorized, most likely incorrectly, that my cats had somehow pooped out an earthworm. Anyway it reads as follows “doctor.proctor said: ‘ha ha… you are pretty funny! i enjoyed stumbling upon this while looking for a on a Dental Admissions Practice Test. Please post more funnies!’” The words themselves aren’t bizarre, I’m just confused how that blog somehow yielded a result for someone looking for a practice questions for an admissions test for dental school. I’ve read it over again and I still don’t get how any of the words or phrases within would lead someone looking for anything dental related to my blog. The internet is funny that way I guess.

Oh and finally, finally, Faith No More AKA the greatest band from the 90’s announced today they are reuniting. I geeked out so hard when I read that online I went to text Theo and then was so excited I threw my phone. Dependent on the when the tour is I feel like seeing them more than once is pretty much mandatory.

Schlitz

Base Desires

2009-02-09T16:47:00.000-08:00

Towards the end of college I really stopped caring about a lot of things. I spent a lot of time goofing off with Theo in classes I wasn’t even in. In particular, between classes I’d find him in a class that was taught via video as in the professor, one I had had the previous term, had filmed himself lecturing and if you were in the class you showed up and watched the video and that was how it was taught. The class was huge, like 300+ kids and this way of teaching conveyance made the most sense. I’d show up well after the video started and then stayed until the teaching aid kicked me out for being disruptive. This was usually about 30 minutes after I sat down.

Realizing there was no real consequences for my actions I told Theo I was going to take the final despite not being in the class. He said it sounded like a great idea and told me where and when the final was to be held. It was in one of the largest halls on campus. Sneaking in and taking a final for the class was relatively simple due to the volume of kids. This just happened to be on St. Paddy’s Day. Being a spirited youth that I was wore a green beanie complete with rotating propeller atop my head.

I found a seat in the middle of the hall, sat down and filled out my scantron with the name Shitty A.(sshole) McFuckerson. Oh, did I not mention I had no intention of actually taking the final in earnest? Nope, this was go be the grand culmination of about 8 years of hopes and dreams after having watching an excellent (though they all are) of Beavis and Butt-Head in my formative years. I believe Mr. McFuckerson’s student ID number was something like 666-69-6969.

The test was handed to me but those around me, had they been paying attention, may have noticed I had already started filling in the bubbles. I didn’t even crack the test open, no my final was more of an artistic endeavor. In the one column I arranged my rows of dots that I filled in so that when looking at them it spelled out “METALLICA!” I think we can all agree that’s a pretty noble cause.

After I was done with the scantron I waited for a moment to hand in my test without detection. My moment struck when the professor exited stage left I stood, walked all the way to the front of the giant hall and exited stage right quickly, the propellers of my beanie spinning. I made my way through a hallway and out into the open air thinking I’d made a clean get away until I heard “Hey! Get back here!” I stopped, for reasons I’m still not clear on, and walked towards the professor. The exchange that follows pretty much went like this.

Him: Why would you do that?
Me: Do what, the test? Oh, I’ve just always wanted to do that.
Him: But why?
Me: Because I just always have, are you familiar with Beavis and Butt-Head?
Him: I just don’t understand…
Me: Oh, I’m not even in your class.
Him: Wait what?
Me: Nope, not even in the class.
Him: Why would you do this? Don’t worry I’m not going to ask for your name.
Me: Well I wouldn’t give it anyway, but I just always wanted to do that, I can’t make it any more basic than that.
Him: I have to get back to the final.

And thus completes maybe the finest accomplishment of my college career. Theo can chime in if we were so inclined as he saw the professor look at my scantron and them come after me. My understanding is that looked sort of funny.

Blinded by her cuteness.

These Things Happen

2009-01-20T17:24:00.000-08:00

I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile now. I want to explain why this blog is called Afternoon Farts, and there is no better time to explain than today which offers up a perfect example of why this blog is named as such. I fart a lot. I eat a lot of fruit and veggies and lean protein. My farts stink, and come in waves. There is the morning wave and the afternoon wave. The afternoon wave is slightly more problematic because on Friday afternoons and evenings I have to supervise our movers as they move various things for us. I find that I’m often stuck in the elevator with upwards of 6 guys and I can’t but help to blast them in a confined space. This is my very reputation at this point. Any bad fecal matter smell is attributed, often rightly, to me. But additionally I sort of like to think of my blogs as brain farts and my intention was to update this blog daily in the afternoon when I had a moment to transcribe some thoughts. Obviously the daily thing isn’t really happening, but hey it was worth a try.

Anyway, an example of how frequent and awful these afternoon farts are I enter the following as an exhibit. I had just returned from picking up the CEO’s car from the auto body shop after many delays. I was just happy to get it back, less happy that the job, owing to a part being lost in shipping, was not totally complete I went up to 24 to see if maybe I could get the keys back to his assistant tonight as I had promised. No luck, the assistant is gone but the man himself is meeting with another senior vice president and I walk by and then turn around and show him through the glass door I have his key. He waves me in and I start to jabber on at an accelerated rate that his car still isn’t technically done. As I’m jabbering unknown to me until it happens a fart, an audible fart, escapes from my rectum. I keep talking like nothing happened and look into his eyes to see if he picked up on the fart. Maybe he did, I’m still unsure, I feel like he may have heard it. I’m unsure how my farts are smelling today, but if they are anything like the past few days if he didn’t hear it he’ll most likely know I did something I shouldn’t have in his presence so long as he isn’t suffering from some form of congestion. I left the office and started to laugh having not believed I just laid an egg in front of the most powerful man in the company and another very important figure. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, one of these days my anus is going to get me into trouble. Maybe that day was today.

Dipple, Dapple, Depple, Dopple, Dupple

Cat Shit and Annelids

2009-01-10T00:09:00.000-08:00

Hi, I own two cats. In general I think they are good cats. Most people agree. The one and sole way they act out I even blame or attribute to my own poor actions. If I do not maintain their litter box to their admittedly high standards they will most likely pee in one of my clothes hamper. I have two, The Penguin and The Frog. The Frog is for my clean clothes and he sits in the corner of my room where the sliding glass door opens. The Penguin conversely is where I deposit my dirty clothes after I'm done wearing them. She sits in the opposite corner of the room. To be clear these little creatures are cylindrical clothes hampers that can collapse on themselves flat, but when extended in their full glory they are pretty bitching hampers. They have lids and it is these lids that are fashioned to look like the animals I've mentioned.

The cats are finicky little beasts and by the week's end I've recently been on high alert. When I wake up in the morning groggy and confused I dislike discovering that one of them has fully peed on one shirt and then maybe a little bit extra on another shirt or two. Those are immediately thrown into The Penguin and I continue my hunt, only now I must sniff test anything I may want to wear. This is the life I lead. It is not pretty or glamorous, and it often smells of cat piss.

Today I came home post a wonderful birthday dinner with my parents and notice The Frog has recent evidence that it has been used as a toilet. I can tell this because rather than standing proudly he is crouched and his lips are kissing the floor; a sure sign of cat malfeasance. I go to investigate nose first. Well it didn't smell like piss but it did smell. Next was the hand test to see how fresh this assault may have been. Oddly, there was no moisture. It was during the hand test that I saw the source of my grievance. It wasn't piss I should have been looking for, no, no, cat shit. The good old number two. Sadly this mildly relieved me because poop cleans much easier than pee. Pee sticks with clothes through more than one washing. I turned to The Penguin to get a dirty sock to use as a glove. Dawning the sock I extracted the healthy looking poop and deposited it on the floor. I'm not sure why the floor was a resting point between The Frog and the toilet where the poop was to end up. I then turned my back on the poop for about 10 seconds. I can't remember why I did this, but I for sure did not look at the poop for a little bit of time. When I came back, and this is where the mystery is, and why I'm even posting this, when I came back there was a worm on the floor not 6 inches from the poop nuggets. An earthworm, an annelid, very much alive and wet and wriggling.

I stood confused as all heck looking at this worm. Where the fuck did this guy come from? Did my cat shit out a worm? How the hell is that even possible? Do they have like the most massive worms ever? Should I be concerned? No Baby Guy you may not play with this worm, get out of here, wait, come back, did you do this? Is that yours? Sadly he didn't respond, he did want to play with the worm that may or may not have come from his ass.

I scooped everything up, worm and all, and threw them in toilet and washed my hands thoroughly. I'm now also a little scared of my cats. It appears they can now shit living animals that they just conjure in their colon. I hope they shit a frog or a turtle soon. I sort of want one of those.

No one fires Monkey on my watch!

Mission Update!

2009-01-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

As I type this my arms are a little wobbly, pulse is still elevated as is my breathing rate. I've finally topped the 100 consecutive push-up mission. I wasn't planning on going for it today but my first 8 sets felt easy and the final set is designed to be a max rep set. I maxed out at 100. The rest of this day could be totally lackluster and it wouldn't matter, I just climbed a summit I didn't think was totally possible upwards of 2 weeks ago.

If shit were napalm we'd all be in serious trouble.

Mark Wins!

2009-01-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

You all are bad friends. You really are. OK, you’re either bad friends you don’t read the Portland Mercury. Fine, I’ll concede it’s probably the latter. But no one out there read last week and what also counts for this week’s Mercury? No one opened up the paper to the letters and read that rather than the normal letters that run every week it was a collection of the best of letters in 2008? Well if they had they would have noticed that yours truly leads off the letters with his letter that won letter of the week back last January. That’s right I penned one of the best of the best of letters. It’s like the crème de le crème of the letter writing populace for 2008. If you need proof here’s the link. Also, the final letter is by far the best one.

I spent yesterday using a five dollar hacksaw to cut my Christmas tree down to size so it can fit in my yard debris can. I then used the same hacksaw to cut down a large limb that broke off of on our trees sometime this week. If you’re wondering if a five dollar hacksaw isn’t the best tool to use to cut thick branches and limbs, well I can tell you it is not. In fact at one point the hacksaw completely feel apart on me. It was fun work though and I can’t think of a better way to spend my New Years morning then in the rain painstakingly cutting wood with a tool not fit for the job.

I then turned my attention to my year end blog. This ate up the next two hours of my day, which is sort of sad considering I worked on it for most of Wednesday at work.

From there Ash and I went to EM where I bought:
Machine Head – The Blackening
Baroness – Red Album
Unsane – Unsane
Kyuss – Wretch
Unearth – The March
Burzum – Det Som Engan Var
Usher – Confessions
Zodiac

I then went home and verbally abused Theo for about an hour as he continually put on shit after shit on TV to watch. What type of shit? Tomcats in HD and The Girl with Sex-Ray Eyes, to name two. Finally we settled on watching Wall-E

Finally I went to sleep only to wake up early for a day of work that I don’t think we should be working. Where I’m going with all this is that at no point did I check the weather and see that snow was even a possibility. Well it did snow, like an inch and a half. I suited up to ride to work and had a heck of time getting off my street. It also turns out that I have no shoe/sock configuration to deal with icy cold water. My feet were so cold they were in pain. I believe my feet have never been colder. The cold was so bad every time I stopped the bike I let out a little grunt of pain. Hey Oregon any time you want to get back to that temperate climate I’ve grown to like so much that would be great.

What are Sex-Ray eyes?

You Put Your Tongue Down My Throat At Your Own Risk

2009-01-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

I do not like New Years. I really don't like to be reminded that another year has passed. I can sit here and take stock in the previous year and see that I went nowhere. This is magnified by my stupid birthday which is right around the corner. Not only has a year gone by but soon I'll be a year older. But I'm going to be fair and tick off some of the major events from this year. Some negative some positive, should be fun.

- I ring in the New Year by puking on a girl. Listen, so not my fault, you put your tongue down my throat at your own risk.

- "Broke" my wrist. In the process 5 cops cars are called to the intersection where the accident takes place due to my raving lunacy.

- Using my "broken" wrist I re-establish contact with a certain nutty girl. She sticks around for almost a whole month and then once again disappears. She then appears to have some crazy telepathic power that results in her sending me a text or e-mail literally within 24 hours of a date with any other girl. How she does this I do not know, but it frankly scares me a little.

- Finally pay off my remaining credit card debt from when I lived with Craig. Consume about a metric ton of sugar in celebration.

- Ash, the best roommate I'll probably ever have, moves out. I mourn his lose greatly. Speaking of moving I help a record six people (Justin, Ash, Katt, Tim, Greg/Jude/Jo/Sandy Tammy/Jason) move this year If and when I ever move again I'm not lifting a box, I'm calling in some favors.

- I discovered metalreviews.com. Think this doesn't need mentioning? I love metal. This site is like a little drop of awesomeness, and led me towards the likes of, Axxis, Corpsing, Grave Digger, Running Wild, Machine Head, Immolation, Maudlin of the Well, Primordial, and a literal fuck ton of others. It was a like whole other world opened up to me.

- I ride from Eugene to Outer or Deep Beaverton. The 120ish mile ride is by far the highlight of my riding summer. It is also probably my favorite ride ever.

- Days after signing up for Seattle to Portland I ride to work and notice my rear wheel is the opposite of true. When I get to work to investigate I find that my frame is cracked and beyond repair. Devastated I go about finding a replacement bike. I manage to find a frame at a good price and take it to a bike shop to switch over my components to the new frame. I'm told it will be done in time for STP. It is not. I hate life for the two weeks it takes to get my bike back.

- With no riding the previous two weeks due to the above bullet I complete the Summit to Surf Fire and Century while earning raising $450 dollars for the American Diabetes Association. It is one of the most miserable rides I've ever done. I despise Hood River and its wind. The highlight was my ascent up to Timberline which was nearly vomit inducing, but it was worth it to beat a fellow cyclist in all Duck gear after he sucked my tire for most of the way up. Little asshole.

- Destroyed Ash's engine. I know what an oil light is and what it means, but in the Audi it's a cute little graphical image that then goes away, when really it shouldn't. Hey car, if you need oil real bad don't let your oil light go out. Anyway, turns out when an engine has no oil it seizes and then doesn't work anymore. This turned out to be a $3,600 lesson to be paid in monthly installments of $100.

- Took the plunge and became a Blazers season ticket holder. Um, yes it is as awesome as it sounds.

- In an effort to do more in my life I volunteer at Oregon Food Bank. I instantly love the warehousing aspects of the place and begin to go weekly. I wish I could tell you I go because I like feeling like I'm helping, but in reality I just really like moving pallets and boxes.

- I go to my very first live WWE event. How I got to this point I'm not totally sure. I do love the WWE though.

- Take in two Metallica shows, one in Portland the other in Seattle. The Portland show is notable because dear old, emphasis on old, dad comes along. Also, Portland's opener was Down. Phil Anselmo is still a god and no one should ever forget this. Seattle's trip was already blogged about extensively. Hooray for Metallica!

- In what was nothing short of a miracle received a total of $1,900 of the $3,000 that Craig owes me. $1,400 of which went into buying a super sweet 52" HD television. Yes, I'm well aware that a debt transfer with Craig paying that sum to Ash makes a lot more sense, but let me ask you this, does a debt transfer get you sports and movies in crystal clear definition that's so good I'll watch just about anything? No, no it does not. Wizards/Bobcats in HD, you bet!

- Somewhere in the year I dropped 15 pounds.

That, in sum, was my year. I think in general it was a positive one, and one that I can't really complain much about.

Now let's look at the best media of the year in this man's ever humble opinion.

Best Album Of 2008:
Metallica – Death Magnetic
Come on, like it was ever going to go to any other band or album? The whole thing is great though a little uneven. The production is absolute shit, but any album with All Nightmare Long on it is a winner.

Other Notable Albums That Came Out In 2008:
Unearth – The March
Genghis Tron – Board Up The House
Origin – Antithesis
Enslaved – Vertabrae
Motorhead – Motorizer
Equilibrium – Sagas
Baroness – Red Album
Avantasia – The Scarecrow

Albums That Didn't Come Out This Year But Were New To Me And Were Totally Awesome:

Machine Head – The Blackening
Hands down the best album I heard all year. This may be the best album released this decade. Top to bottom it is perfect.

Running Wild – Black Hand Inn
Corpsing – The Stench of Humanity
Arsis – We Are the Nightmare
Avantasia – The Metal Opera Part I and II
Maudlin Of The Well – Leaving Your Body Map
Paramore – Riot!
Primordial – To The Nameless Dead
Sodom – Agent Orange
The Sword – Age Of Winters
Verdunkeln – Einblick In Den Qualenfall
Witchfinder General – Death Penality.

I probably missed a bunch of albums in both categories but I spent a lot of time listening to the above.

Movie of the Year:
Wall-E: No contest on this one. While Dark Knight is excellent Wall-E does everything perfect. I've watched it about 10 times now and enjoy it every single time.

Game of the Year:
Fallout 3: I played it for 70+ hours.

Notables:
Valkyria Chronicles
Rock Band 2
Dead Space
Grand Theft Auto IV
Final Fantasy Tactics A2.

Truthfully, in an effort to curb spending I bought fewer games this year. Also, due to roommates that also want to use the TV I find my time to play game has contracted. Thanks a lot roommates.

Fueled by a new boss I manage to read a fair amount of books this year. A few I would rank up there with the best I've ever read. They were, though I'm sure I'll miss a few.

Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace (RIP)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows – J.K. Rowling
Underworld – Don Dellilo
The Yiddish Policeman's Union – Michael Chabon
Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
Gravity's Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
The Road – Cormic McCarthy
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles – Haruki Murakami
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
American Pyscho – Bret Easton Ellis

This comes to a total of 6,320 pages. I think I'll kill that this year. The best book I read was Infinite Jest of course, but to be fair, the best book I read that wasn't Infinite Jest was easily Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. If you're from Oregon you owe it to yourself to read this. In fact, the person that recommended it to me boldly stated you can't consider yourself an Oregonian if haven't read this book. I happen to agree with that statement. The book is outright genius and something I'll probably reread for the rest of my life.

OK this is getting a little long so onwards to the resolutions.

I will keep working on my various missions, duh.

I will read The Brothers Karamazov. For those that read these year end blogs year in and year out this has been on the last three resolution lists.

Most importantly I will do two things. I will do a better of job of not focusing on the disconnect between where I want to be in life and where I am. This causes me to be annoyed or upset with myself far too often. If anyone has seen me "almost" cry after a soccer game when we tie or lose because I've missed hitting the open net again, or otherwise feel like I've cost us a recreational (as is in purely for fun) game knows I'm a little too hard on myself. Ideally I'll focus on what I do right and not what I do wrong. I will focus on what I have and not what I don't have. Part two will involve me identifying what I want and getting it.

That's it, that's the past year. See you later 2008, hello 2009. I will say as someone that dislikes odd numbers I'm not a fan of this year already or the fact that I'm soon to be an odd number age, 27, here in 12 days. Lousy odd numbers, ruining a whole year for me.

I didn't puke on a girl last night, already off to a bad start to 2009

Road Flare + Rock Salt or Whatever = Chlorine Gas

2008-12-29T12:50:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that my dear parents read this very blog. I know this because my dad is enamored with it. This I do not mind one bit, but it certainly strikes me as a turn of events I did not anticipate. So with that I’m posting for maybe the third time this little gem of a story. I like this one a lot. If someone asks me tell them a funny story I may very well lead with this. I figure I can post this without much fear because it isn’t like he can fire me or even ground me anymore and he might just appreciate the stupidity of his son. It also wouldn’t shock me if he already knew about this and has just never brought it up. Anyway, onwards!

Picture a warehouse with long orderly rows of shelves. On these shelves are pallets. The shelves reach skywards of up to 24 feet. It was my job, to go up and down these rows hour after hour, night after night; pulling product located on the pallets and send it to the stores. This process is called picking. Picking is boring work. By the second hour of a 10 hour shift you already have a good idea of where you’re going to be making stops in each of the aisles; the only thing that really changes is quantity.

There is a brief respite from the normal picking and that is if it is your turn to pick motor oil and the flame room. The “flame room” being short for flammable room. In this aptly named room is stored those little green propane tanks for Coleman and other portable stoves, spray paint, road flares, mace, anything, um, flammable. The flame room is a pretty brilliant little place because it is separated from the warehouse by a giant bay door and once inside, if one were so inclined, they can goof off out of the prying eye co-workers, or bosses, who, the boss of this shift, just also happened to be my dad.

Now the thing to really understand is that picking the oil and flame room is quick work. Anyone should be done by first break which would be great if they were allowed to go home, but neither I, nor anyone else was. Instead, as a reward for my fast and speedy work, I got stuck helping someone else in what was usually the absolute worst area to pick. This means that I usually did some minor dicking-off in the flame room so that at the very least I could get to first break before switching what I was picking.

This night, did I mention this is all during the graveyard shift? No? Well it was. I think people lose their minds a bit working graveyard. Anyway, this night I went for the gold in the All-Around Dicking-Off event. Towards the beginning of my shift I was in the flame room when what do I come in contact with? Some mace. Now being the non-violent, as in I’ll most likely never get maced, curious individual guy that I am I got to thinking, “how bad could this really hurt? Well can’t hurt to try” into the air I sprayed the mace and proceeded to walk into the aerosolized rape deterrent that hung at face level. Well it didn’t feel great, but not bad. Not bad? What the heck? Shouldn’t this really hurt? Well OK, round two, but this time with more! Well round two taught me a valuable lesson. Mace hurts, don’t get maced.

After recovering from the mace I left the flame room only to return 20 minutes later on what would be the final stop in the flame room for the night. It being the last stop meant that I had a little time to goof off before break. I’m not sure what possessed me to walk towards, and then ultimately pick up, the emergency roadside flare, but soon enough it was in my hand and I was turning it over reading the instructions. Seems simple enough, strike end on cap, put on road. OK, sure, but how hard is this striking? Well off the cap goes and I commence to with some tentative strikes of the end of the flare against the cap. Hmm, that’s not hard enough, what about a little harder? No? OK well what if a little old lady is in need of this flare, could she actually do this? Harder? Still nothing? And then, to my great surprise, really, yes, I was surprised, the flare lit.

Here I am in the flame room surrounded by flammable things, the boss’s kid, with a lit flare in my hand. Is there any good explanation for this should someone see me? Well I did what comes naturally, I ran. I ran in circles, I ran in lines, I ran in hopes that the movement of the air would somehow extinguish the flames like a person blowing on a birthday cake. This of course is flawed thinking. What about cutting off the oxygen supply, suffocation? I stepped on the flare. The only thing that accomplished was increasing the smell as the sole of my shoe began to melt. OK, OK, just think, there’s got to be something here. Yes, I see it a giant drum full of, what is that, rock salt? Whatever, I’m sure I can use that to extinguish the flame! In I plunge the flare and the flare, predictably, does not go out. Instead, The Flare + Rock Salt, or Whatever = Green Smoke, or in my severely freaked out little mind, chlorine gas. To be perfectly accurate the thought that ran trough my head at the time was “OH SHIT CHOLRINE GAS, I’M GONNA DIE!” All of this ate up about 6 minutes of time which I can assure you felt like a fucking eternity in my situation. Defeated I stood still, flare in hand, waiting for the thing to extinguish. In about two more minutes it did and I hastily left the flame room.

Thinking I’d made a clean escape I hear my name called and turn around to see a female co-worker, in her 50’s, not terribly bright but pleasant all the same, descending down the stairs from her work area which is actually on the roof of the flame room. She asks me if I smell anything burning. I look at her and with a straight face tell her I smell nothing out of the ordinary when simply nothing could be further from the truth. Her back is to the opening of the flame room and as she’s asking me about a burning smell there is smoke literally poring from the giant bay door. It is unmistakable and incredibly obvious that something was amiss. She looked at me and simply said “well, OK, but if you do smell something could you let me know?” I told her naturally I could do that and made haste to break.

Purgatory Dance Party

I Miss My Bike

2008-12-17T17:07:00.000-08:00

I dislike the snow. When I say that people call me a crotchety old man. Well no, I mean, I don’t think my advanced mental age has anything to do with my dislike of snow. I dislike the snow because it disrupts, well, everything. And now that I’m not in school snow days don’t exist. I still have to go to work only it’s a pain to get to the place I’m forced to go only because I need money to pay for things I like such as rent, food, and toilet paper. But it extends beyond that here’s why I dislike the snow.

I will first concede that watching snow fall and how it settles over everything is sort of nice. That pristine snow blanket that covers the backyard or patio area, cars, the road before cars brave them, all of that is nice. What is not nice is when the snow gets driven on, sanded, graveled, and then turns a brownish grey. This I detest. It is not clean; it reminds me that the world around me is filthy. I don’t care for that reminder. After about 2 hours of beauty we are then subjected to days if not weeks of gross looking snow everywhere. That isn’t a fair trade at all.

Speaking of gravel I hate this stuff. Yeah, great, it helps cars gain traction but when the snow melts where does it all eventually get pushed to? My bike lanes. What was laid down to help cars safely drive in slippery conditions is now responsible for making my commutes more treacherous. What’s worse I can anticipate the gravel being in my bike lanes until April or later. Trust me on this, it sticks around forever.

The snow also means I can’t ride my bike. This will always upset me as I need that bike. In the coming week I’ll start to get really down on myself and my life. I’ll be stuck walking to work or taking the MAX and I’ll hate it. When I’m hating that I’ll think about other things I hate until I work myself up into some weird little funk. This funk will go away the moment I get on my bike but not a moment before that. I have no doubt that my mood being so tied into my bike is probably not a great thing, but then I can almost always ride my bike unless the roads are covered with ice. And I’ve been debating the bike riding vs. the not bike riding since Sunday at 9 in the morning. Riding my bike with its skinny little tires I know is a mistake. The two times I’ve tried to ride in the snow I’ve fall down. One of those times left me with a scar and I was almost hit by a bus. Snow and ice have bested me and I have accepted this. The other part of me thinks that riding might be okay if I just go slow and take my time. But then that type of riding doesn’t appeal to me. I like to fly. I dislike having to go at partial speed because I’m unsure if I can stop or make turns. If that’s the case I’ll use other means of transportation. But darn it I want to ride my bike so bad and not be bested by anything. I’d like nothing to stand in my way from doing what I want to do. I will now return this debate to its internal location from whence it came.

The snow makes us all act like idiots. Those that shouldn’t drive but think the can do and wreck their cars or just leave them stranded on the freeways. I’m always confused by those people. They just leave the cars after throwing their hands up and yelling “this course is impossible!” Do they then ask someone they know to pick them up at the next exit? Does that person then get stuck so then they call another friend or family member as they both wait to be saved? Is this some endless cycle that finally ends with some curmudgeon of a friend says “what, you’re all stranded? No I’m not going to come bail your asses out, you’re all a bunch of idiots, why would I reward this type of behavior?” It, the snow, makes people into panicked stricken morons, “I need chains!” “Someone please install these chains!” “What do you mean I need to know my tire size, chains are different?!?!” I know this and other tire related inquires and exclamations because I’m about to take a serious digression into a trip I had to make to Les Schwab.

It was bad enough I had to be at work today after treating Sunday night like a Friday night and staying out too late. I then got a call from my boss saying that one of our VP’s would like chains for his car. This was at 10:30. Upstairs I go to talk to the receptionist to find out where his car is. Naturally the car isn’t at work so I don’t know his tire size. I mull this over and decide to call our tire vendor to see if they can tell me the tire size. This was a brilliant course of action. With my tire size in hand I call the local Les Schwab. The line was busy. I tried again the line was busy. I tried about 5 more times and got the phone to ring. The phone then rang long enough that I began to wonder how many times a phone rings in a minute. Based on my findings your typical phone rings once every 6 seconds, or 10 times a minute. I heard probably 150 phone rings before someone finally picked up. Success they had the tire chains.

At 11:00 I was back in the elements wearing my many layers

The walk to Les Schwab isn’t an awful walk. I cross through the Pearl. I believe I’m one of the few people that actually likes the Pearl District. I like it because it is clean, no one asks me for change, and they have some shops that are cool and also some shops that give me pause and wonder why it exists. I then cross over the freeway into the Alphabet District which is not without its charms. For instance, on this day as I was working my way towards Les Schwab a man in only a sports coat, shirt, and pair of shorts crossed in front of me. The temperature outside was hovering around the mid 20’s at the time so the choice shorts seemed dubious. I was unable to tell if the man was homeless, or insane, or just one of those stalwart I-wear-shorts-year-round-and-fuck-the-weather-and-those-who-judge type of guys, or if this was merely all he had to wear today. I really hope he had something, anything, to change into because when I did my double take to look at the man, his path perpendicular to mine, and his backside now the side I could see, it was pretty clear he’d shit his pants. The brown stain was still a little moist looking and was of a light brown that made me think it was a ‘wet’ shit. By this time the man was clear across the street and on his way.

I finally arrived at Les Schwab and the line inside was large. I made a quick move to use the restroom and then stepped back into the waiting area and realized that the line was even longer than I thought. I got at the back and waited. Les Schwab is the kind of place that makes me dislike other people. For some reason a lot of people think their needs are more important or pressing then those around them so they throw a little fit to get their way. I’ve watched time and time again. I’ve waited in this Les Schwab for more hours than I can count and invariably there are assholes who think that they should get treated like the good people they think they are. Only I’d counter that by acting like an asshat and demanding service you’re not a good person. I’d get into an even longer description of this European asshole that was so worried he wouldn’t get what he wanted that he cut to the front of the line multiple times, slowed everything down as a result, and then got the chains that he wanted after only confusing everyone behind the counter. The mere fact that this behavior was rewarded with him essentially cutting in front of me and about 6 other people was nearly enough for me to yell “hey asshole, wait your fucking turn you fucktard, also your pants, jacket, and shoes suck.” No, I bit my tongue and watched him leave. I take solace in the fact that it was pretty evident that he didn’t know this tire size and seized a pair of chains that he thought might work. Here’s hoping he spent 75 bucks on chains that don’t work.

Cute girls receive way, way, way more help with tire chains than guys do.

I returned to work with the tire chains. I thought my time with Les Schwab was done but then we had the chains for the Tower Van break and I was back trekking there for the third time in as many work days. I really don’t want to go back until, at the earliest, March.

That and a few other reasons is why I dislike the snow. I live in Portland because the weather is temperate and I shouldn’t have to deal with this crap. It was pointed out to me that I live in Portland because I was born here and I’m not prone to moving. That person is probably right. If I were born in Michigan I’d still be there probably about 50 pounds heavier and a fan of football. If anything I really dodged a bullet there.

Cocking a snook.

New Mission!

2008-12-15T17:15:00.000-08:00

I was going to post a long blog with my feelings about the snow and how much I hate it. Have no fear that post will see the light of day but the day is waning and I’m not about to stick around for another hour while I finish it up. Instead I offer up a new mission.

Mission: No more extraneous spending.
Without a lot of detail I, like most of my peers, live paycheck to paycheck. I hate this. I miss having a savings to speak of. I haven’t had one for some time and that makes me nervous pretty much all of the time. So with that said I’m suspending any unnecessary spending. I have a dollar amount I’d like in my savings this time next year. I will not reveal that number but if I achieve my goal I’ll be a happy camper. Yes, that may be boring, but again by posting here I’m now accountable to all of my 5 readers which I’ve found that if I’m held accountable for something I’m far more likely to see it through than if I’m not.

SPB: Shit and puke bad

Up and Atom!

2008-12-09T17:09:00.000-08:00

Now that my yearly time off is over and I’m back at work it is time to reflect on my missions and update you my dear readers.

Mission: Complete Fallout 3
Check. I wrapped this up on Sunday at 4:28 p.m. While I don’t have the numbers directly in front of me I believe the total play time was either a shade over or under 70 hours. There were moments when I played this game that I actually fell asleep with controller in hand. When I did this I’d just turn the game off and slept on the couch for 4 hours before waking up, turning the game back on, and resuming my play. I did this two or three times. This is pretty much the highest compliment I can pay a game. One so engrossing I cannot conceive of a moment where I don’t want to play it. The game is not perfect. The ending, sigh, the ending is just so lack luster. The ending sequence is really underwhelming and it took me all of 30 minutes to complete and it didn’t even have a hint of hardness to it. The biggest problem is that the game is open ended so that I spent the better part of 50 hours doing anything but trying to save (or ruin) humanity. By the time I decided to just beat the game I had lost track of the plot and didn’t really care. Another problem is that the game does a very poor job of really explaining just how the government works in this game. When it, the government, finally does get involved it feels pretty tacked on and worthless. In all though I’m not going to get too disappointed in a game I clearly enjoyed so much I was willing to play it for 70 hours.

Mission: Read and finish 3 books, possible more.
Failed. Two things I had not anticipated on made this goal rough. The first being I was totally unprepared for Fallout 3 to take so much of my time. I really didn’t see that coming, I was anticipating 45-50 hours not 70. Second, I forgot how little I sleep on the weekends. Time off is one giant weekend to me so didn’t really sleep more than 5 hours a night. I popped out of bed, or off the couch, or out of the recliner no later than 9:30 everyday regardless of when I finally went to sleep. How this impacts the reading goal is quite simple. On most days I was pretty tired and could only manage to play Fallout 3 and stay awake. Within 30 minutes of reading I was quickly putting the book down and sleeping. I’d then wake up energized and craving some Fallout 3. It was a vicious cycle that did not lend itself to finishing books.

Mission: Stay at my “playing weight” of 140.5 pounds.
Failed, but within reason. The most recent weigh in on Saturday morning had me at 142.5. That came after a night of swilling beer and two weeks of inactivity. I also just happened to do a body composition test today. My body age is 22 in contrast of my actual age which is almost 27. In all, I’m sure in two weeks I’ll be back down to 140.5.

Mission: No heat.
Failed, blissfully. When I was a junior in college I lived in near squalor. The place I was renting had no central heating but rather two modest space heaters that really did nothing to warm the place. I had to keep one in the bathroom on a timer so that when I showered in the morning I didn’t freeze when exiting the shower. The other one I wheeled around to wherever I was sitting. Even with the heater I still found myself wearing two pairs of pants, a long sleeve shirt, a hoodie, two pairs of socks (one wool), and a blanket wrapped around me and I was still cold. At night I slept in all my clothes and under three blankets and still shivered. I told myself I’d never allow myself to be that cold again. Flash forward to day one of my time off as I sat on my couch in full long underwear, pants, long sleeve shirt, hoodie with the hood up, two pairs of socks, and I was still feeling cold. Luke came home and seeing me like this on day two under a blanket and he said “you know you can turn the heat on.” And I agreed instantly. The heat came out and all of a sudden I was happy and playful and looked forward to saying up all night rather than going to bed at 2 in the morning because I couldn’t deal with the cold anymore. Yeah, I’m a wimp, but I at least I was a comfy wimp.

Mission: Complete LittleBigPlanet, and get hooked into Valkyria Chronicles.
Failed. Maybe you haven’t picked up on how monopolizing of my time Fallout 3 was.

Mission: Clean garage, make much needed trip to Goodwill, do some pretty easy yet important bike maintenance.
Check.

Mission: Rip all my CD’s and make new Mp3’s.
Failed. It’s boring tedious work. I did get all the way to Dr. Octagon. So like less than third of my CD’s.

Mission: Take a shower at least every other day.
Check, surprisingly. It helped that even with the heat on I was still a little cold and taking a shower would warm me for about an hour. I also just felt like my day was a day if I showered. I only missed one day without a shower. I was pretty amazed by this.

And while I’m here yammering on about my time off missions I might as well update you all on two of my other missions posted back 11.13.08.

Mission: Don’t drink for 30 days.
Checkish. By my math I had a drink on day 29 and 23 hours. So what happened? A cute girl told me to get a drink. I’d do pretty much anything a cute girl tells me to do so long as it’s within reason. I did learn two key things from this mission. One, any fear I had that I had a drinking problem is now gone. Had I had a problem I would have actually found it difficult to not drink for 30 days. Instead I found it easy; it was like being in college when I abstained. I just wasn’t interested. There were no moments where I thought I wish I were drinking, or this would be better if I had a drink in my hand. That was a bit of a relief really. Two, it isn’t that Drunk Mark is a slob that doesn’t like to brush his teeth it’s that Tired Mark is the slob that forgoes the teeth brushing. I’ve found that after 2 in the morning if I’m tired and I just want to go to bed making that pit stop in the bathroom is just like trying to climbe biggest mountain. I did however like not drinking, it was cheaper, it saved me some empty carbs, and I didn’t over eat. If anything I’ll be drinking less from now on.

Mission: Finish Gravity’s Rainbow before January 1st.
Check. Wow, this book is incredible and well worth the near year it took me to finish. I didn’t understand everything I read, I didn’t follow the whole plot, and I certainly would need to read it at least two more times before I could feel like I ‘got’ the book, but I’ll certainly never forget it.

Rock, Robot Rock

"Dimebag" Darrell Abbot May He Rest In Peace

2008-12-08T17:34:00.000-08:00

I’ve returned to work which means this spot will up updated much more frequently then what is was during my time off. I’ll be posting a blog tomorrow updating everyone on my time off missions and the other various missions I posted here last month. Today though sadly marks the four year anniversary of the murder of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbot during a concert in Columbus Ohio. He was shot to death while on stage by a clearly deranged individual. Dime, his brother Vinnie Paul, Rex Brown, and the Godly Phil Anselmo brought forth some of the greatest music ever recorded.

Pantera is without a doubt one of the best bands that ever existed and one of the main reasons this is so is because Dimebag was one of the best guitarist to ever wield the instrument. Listen to a Pantera track, any off them, his ability to both make a deep chunky riff that rattles the teeth and then switch to a high pitched flowing solo is something only to him. He’s fluid, it sounds like liquid metal when listening to him play music. The best basketball analogy I can give you is he’s like Scottie Pippen. He is fluid and graceful, but can chunk out some of the grittiest riffage known to man.

I just wanted to make note that on this day four years ago we lost a legend and that today is as good as any other to blast some Pantera.

I miss you Dime

Metallica Gig Report: Wherein Mark Fights Over A Beach Ball.

2008-12-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

Road tripping with Theo is fun. A quick trip up to Seattle usually proves to be a good time. Making the trip in anticipation of seeing the greatest band ever is cause for celebration. We headed northward to see Metallica, and between the fun had on the road, and the concert itself I think both of us can agree it worth the 12 total hours we committed to the event.

Theo likes to drive fast. I like to ride fast. When a car blocks us from driving at the pace we like Theo get’s antsy and I get angry. In this case after we had passed the car that was the root of our slowing I had just finished eating a banana the peel was still grasped in my hand. What to do with such a thing? Well, what would Mario do (WWMD)? Mario would throw that peel behind him in an attempt to make Wario spin out wouldn’t he? Yes he would. Down the window goes and as I throw the banana peel high into the air the wind takes a hold of it lofting it behind us. Sadly we can neither confirm nor deny if the banana peel hit the target.

I’d also like to note here that Theo may say he ate bento but when he burps it will most certainly smell like he’s consumed multiple Slim Jims. I’d say roughly 9 based on the stink level.

There was a moment when we hit some bad traffic that panic arose within. I had to pee. My mind can tell my bladder “hey man, it’s cool, don’t freak out, the car is moving you’ll be out of this car and peeing in like 45 minutes you can hold it.” However, my mind cannot tell my bladder that in good faith if the car is not moving which it was not. It was totally feasible that if I exited the car and peed on the median I’d have plenty of time to catch up with the car based on the current flow of traffic. Still though, it was a dubious plan at best. Bladder shyness was a serious problem as a youth. It is certainly less so now, but the thought of getting a good flow going in front of a traffic jam seemed like a pretty tall order. But also, what harm is there in trying? I picked my spot, an under pass, and exited the car. Have you done this? Excited your car on I-5 during a traffic jam? It’s intimidating. I moseyed up to the median unbuttoned by fly and proceeded to try and pee. It was loud and cars were creeping around behind my back. This pretty much made my testacies ascend inside my body and I knew I had been bested. I caught back up with Theo’s car but only after oddly enough pantomiming like I had just peed and my mission was accomplished. I don’t even want to go into the psychology of trying to pretend like I peed for a bunch of strangers that may or may not have even noticed I had exited the car. The take home message here is I’m not ready for road side peeing on I-5 in a traffic jam.

Theo and I could potentially be a pretty potent Linkin Park karaoke duo.

I will say that Lamb of God sucks. Please do not buy their albums. They have the exact same drum beat to every single song, what’s worse, I can do probably do that very beat. I shouldn’t be able to claim that of a band that opens for Metallica and yet I can. I can air drum it which is, as you know, the exact same as actually being able to drum it physically.

I like t-shirt spotting at metal shows. I always see some good ones. This show did not disappoint. In fact this show had a shirt that sporting what may very be my new motto in life. Bear with me here. The shirt read in large white letters on a black “My balls your chin.” OK first we need a comma after balls and before your, and for politeness sakes perhaps a question mark at the end of the whole thing might be nice. Ideally the shirt would read “My balls, your chin?” This is puerile and that is why I like it. As for it being my motto. Well in that case the motto would be “my balls, your chin.” What that would convey would be I get what I want in life by demanding or earning it. It is also entirely possible I thought about this shirt far too much.

another shirt of note read “your retarded.” Which, come on, isn’t that like casting stones in a glass house if can’t even get the right “you’re” on the shirt?

There were two large dudes sitting to the right of us across the aisle. They were so large that one could not fit in his seat and opted to sit between the seats on the arm rest. This obviously made it pretty hard for his buddy who was huge in his own right to sit in the remaining one half of his seat. They did the most sensible thing which was to stand half way in the aisle. When security came down to ask them to sit the real hard ass looking dude made the security guard feel about an inch tall and was pretty much allowed to do as he pleased from then on out. We were pretty close to the barrier that separated the seats from the floor area. The barrier was guarded by security. In the case of our area it was a skinny kid. I looked at him for awhile as he sized up the big hard ass looking dude. His eyes very clearly said “man I hope this guy doesn’t try to get on the floor here I’m pretty sure there isn’t a lot I can do about that.”

The show itself was stellar as always. Yes they are old, but they can still play.

During one the breaks between songs the lights were up a bit and Mr. Kirk Hammett was on our side of the stage looking at the crowd. Theo made a movement and caught Kirk’s attention. It was clear for a split second we was looking right at us. What to do? Well naturally I gave really goofy wave because goofy waves are fairly metal. Then something astonishing happened, he returned the wave in a similarly goofy fashion. That’s right, me and Kirk, Kirk and I, we’re goofy waving buddies. If you like I can show the wave and you can bask in the knowledge that that very style of wave was returned by Kirk. I get to call him Kirk now that we’re goofy waving buddies.

I got hungry mid set right when The Day That Never Comes started. Luckily I planned for this turned to my jacket which stored a cut carrot. As I ate the carrot I made the mistake of inhaling right as a swallowed. This happens in about one in every twenty carrots I eat. I’m not sure how it happens but the result is wholly unpleasant. Little carrot bits make their way into my sinus rather than down my esophagus. I know this because I can feel them in there and a few times to combat the problem I’ve blown my nose and sure enough carrot bits came out. Well in this case I lacked a tissue so I had to go for the slightly messier procedure which involves coughing and hocking up some spit to try and clear out my sinuses. The reason this is problematic is that often when I cough or hork some snot the carrot bits escape from my mouth with little regard for their surroundings. I’m pretty sure the people in front of me have some carrot bits courteous of me in their hair. Then a little later I bit my tongue hard enough it still hurts as I type this. I guess I shouldn’t try and eat carrots at a Metallica concert, who knew?

With the show coming to a close I asked Theo to switch spots so I could be in the aisle. Having been to the Portland show a month earlier I knew that during Seek and Destroy black beach balls with “Metallica” printed on them would drop from the ceiling. I wanted one of these unspeakably bad. I was just out of range at the Portland show but in Seattle I was confident I could get one with just the right bounce. I was right as it turned out. I got my hands on a giant one but as I was collecting it some real asshat charged me and grabbed the ball in two hands to my one. I tightened my grip and it was, as they say, on. He pushed me, he pulled me, he pushed me some more. My grip much to my surprise held firm. He got mad, I got determined. He then shoved me into Theo, and then into the people in front of me. I still had this incredible iron grip that would not break. Then another guy got in on the action. The two them both pulled against me and yet my one hand still didn’t even weaken. I was kind of amazed at this point and also thinking to myself that it was absolutely absurd to be in a crazy fight over a cheap beach ball. At this point the tugging hit a frenzy and they two of them actually dove down the stairs on top of each other. It was here that I finally had my grip break. It took two grown men falling down and out of my reach for my grip to break. Security was soon on the scene. The dick who started the whole thing ran off with the ball with a giant gaping hole in the side which I’m assuming was where my hand had been. The other guy, bless him, jumped over the barrier and was caught by like 6 guards. Ah, but not all is lost. Lars kicked one of these sought after balls directly into Theo’s arms. Theo then, the graciously gent that he is, turned it over to me.

The ride home was rainy, and boring save for one wicked accident. A Franz truck somehow lost one of its trailers. The trailer was tipped over and bread had spilled clear across the grass median and into our lane with Theo promptly hitting a loaf of bread.

In all it was excellent time. My knees are bruised from the beach ball scuffle, Theo got a 44 dollar parking ticket, but really what’s a bruised knee and 44 dollars to King County for opportunity to see Metallica and fight over a black beach ball?

I want you in my tangerine dreams.

Monday 11.24.08

2008-11-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

9:00 Wake

9:15 Get out of bed

9:45 - 11:30 Am happy to report Jack Bauer is still a badass. I’m not a fan of the weasel that works at the US Embassy and sincerely hopes he gets his during season 7. Why do I still watch "24"?

11:30 - 12:00 Complete a truly lack luster push-up set.

12:30 - 1:30 Lunch with an episode of Friday Night Lights

1:30 - 3:30 Fallout 3. I mercilessly kill a bunch of Ghouls and then about 15 assholes in another rival vault. I get lost in the vault for about 20 minutes because the map is of little help, and the vault is poorly designed. I wish I had a nuke on me so that I could also remove this vault for existence.
3:30 - 5:30 A reading/nap combo.

5:30 - 6:30 Listen to music while preparing dinner and getting ready for the Blazer game.

7:00 - 10:30 Watch the Blazers just barely eke out a win over the Kings. I now hate Spencer Hawes even more.

11:00 - 1:30 In what is truly a lapse of judgment I kill Robert the head guardsmen for the Family. It turns out that killing him means I'm now on "violent" terms with the Family and arguably the residents of Arefu and the quest that I'd been working for the past two hours I have now failed. In an effort to revert to a older save I realize I'm boned. For the record Robert is an asshole and I don't feel any remorse for killing him. Tomorrow, just as soon as I've helped out the Family and the town, every dies.

1:30 - 2:10 Watch another episode of Friday Night Lights then attempt to crash out on the couch even though I know this is a poor decision. Baby Girl struggles for about 10 minutes to finally get out from under my head as I was using her as a pillow. The dryer then makes the super annoying sound it makes when the clothes are dried and I stumble into the computer to shut it down. Ahh and it appears I'm about to be treated to a late night BM, must hurray.

2:20 - 2:41 Read one more chapter though it takes longer because very much against my will the book is falling out of my hands and I'm drifting off to sleep.

Duff Man

Sunday 11.23.08 Vacation Day 2

2008-11-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

9:30 - Wake

9:30 – 1:00 Clean

1:00 - 4:00 Watch Columbus win the MLS cup over the New York Red Bulls in what was a pretty poorly played game. Also got Munk'd.

4:00 - 5:50 Go to Costco with Katt and Ash, instantly remember I hate Costco. Also spot a kid in a Rey Mystero shirt and say to him Booyaka Booyaka and he looks at me like I'm crazy.

6:00 - 7:20 Finish Sometimes a Great Notion. You should read it.

8:00 - 11:00 Went to Paul and Mel's the watch Survivor series

12:00 - 2:30 Play Fallout 3 concluding my night by remotely detonating the town of Megaton's nuclear bomb located in the center of town for which the town is named. Something that was certainly evil but I don't even feel remotely bad because the town was laid out was poorly it was increasingly frustrating to find any of my many destinations within the city walls. Let that be a lesson to future civil engineers in a post apocalyptic world. If you make your city a navigational nightmare I'll nuke it, it's just that simple

2:30 - 4:40 I guess I passed out on the couch. I find there's very little difference between going to bed drunk and going to bed after I've passed out from being tired on one of the living room's seating options. Both are very disorienting and I'm truly conflicted on how to proceed to bed.

Oh now you've done it.

Missions: Vacation Edition

2008-11-21T16:24:00.000-08:00

It’s another round mission but this time they are vacation missions. That’s right, in after the conclusion of today I’ll be away from work for 16 days. I really cannot believe I’m about to be away for that long. It will be the longest vacation I’ve had since graduating college. But with 16 days of I have things I’d like to accomplish they are listed below in order, as always, descending order from most likely to least likely.

Mission: Complete Fallout 3
Only the game I’ve wanted to play for more than 2 years. I own it, even bought the collectors set because it came with a metal lunch box so if I ever wanted to go goth I’d have one of the key accessories already. I’ve been resisting playing it because I want large chunks of time, like 8 hours uninterrupted, to play it. I need to beat it via the evil route, the one where I murder people after stealing their bible, take food from the poor, and kill some kids. -I’m pretty much the worst type of sociopath if I’m allowed to behave poorly in a game.- I’ll beat it being evil and if I feel like I missed out on a lot of stuff I’ll play it again via the good route.

Mission: Read and finish 3 books, possibly more.
I will need to finish Sometimes a Great Notion which I’m 200 pages from finishing. By the way this book, if you didn’t know, is by Ken Kesey and I’m fairly convinced everyone from Oregon needs to read it. It is brilliant. I’ll then start and hopefully finish The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami before turning my attention to The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellows. All told I’m looking at a reading list that is about 1,300 pages of dense text. I think I’m selling myself short and will probably be midway through The Breaks of the Game the iconic book about the ‘77-‘78 Trail Blazer team that was in many ways superior to the one that one the championship in ‘77 before crumbling because of an injury to Bill Walton.

Mission: Stay at my “playing weight” of 140.5 pounds.
16 days where I plan to ride my bike very little and with multiple Thanksgiving meals would make me think that gaining a few pounds is a possibility if not an inevitability. To off set this I plan on exercising daily per normal only I’ll mix it up a bit. I’ll run and see if I still hate it. I’ll still be marching towards my 100 consecutive push-up goal. I’ll also become either full blown anorexic or, more likely, bulimic. I need to research my options.

Mission: No heat.
The house gets cold, very cold. I’ve been pushing very hard to the housemates to keep the heat off because I’m cheap. I can’t very well be championing for no heat and then also turn it on the moment I wake up because I don’t like playing games in the cold. That would be fairly hypocritical. Luckily I have long underwear this year. Long underwear is awesome.

Mission: Complete LittleBigPlanet, start and get hooked into Valkyria Chronicles.
Why not, I have 16 days to play games.

Mission: Clean garage, make much needed trip to Goodwill, do some pretty easy yet important bike maintenance.
Have you seen my garage lately, it’s a shame. The bike needs new brake pads and I’ve been putting out swapping to a fresh pair of cleats for my shoes for months now. I think if anything my current cleats have cleaned up my form because the tiniest amount of twisting in my foot and ankle will cause my shoe to come out of the peddle. Still I’d feel much better on my sprinting if I wasn’t about a millimeter of twist away from coming unclipped.

Mission: Rip all my CD’s and make all new Mp3s.
OK, quickly now, when I first started ripping my CD’s back in high school I did so without adding an ID3 tag to any of them. I hated ID3 tags because it was like the hidden name behind the file name. Well turns out in 2008 ID3 tags are pretty great. They allow things like Window Media Player and Winamp to automatically sort your Mp3s into the albums they are apart of. Also, in order to stream any Mp3 from a computer to, say, a PS3 that Mp3 needs an ID3 tag. So while I have something like 4000 Mp3’s from some of my favorite bands and albums I cannot stream them anywhere, and playback with WMP or Winamp is less than ideal, this makes me mad. I’ve looked into various programs that will automatically tag my Mp3’s but they either cost money or suck or, most likely, do both. I plan on doing a total computer reorganization of which the final result will be most likely never truly appreciated or utilized by me.

Mission: Take a shower at least every other day.
OK here’s my problem. I don’t plan on getting out much. Once I’ve determined I’m not leaving the house for the day, or if I am I’m not likely to run into anyone I’m looking to impress, I forego showering. It’s a bad tendency. Sometimes I’ll miss a shower Thursday evening and then before I know it due to poor choices I haven’t showered until Sunday evening. This happens, quiet frankly, somewhat frequently. Don’t get me wrong, delaying the showering for that long really makes the shower feel great but at what cost? I’m hoping that with the running and other exercising I’ll be sweaty enough that not showering is out of the question.

Since I’ll be on vacation I won’t be posting blogs of substance (for lack of a better word) I imagine I’ll post some basic stats for each day, which I’m sure will be of no interest to anyone but I’d like to see, at the end of it, how many hours I spent playing games, reading, sleeping, etc.

dildos rigged to pump floods of paregoric orgasim to the capillaries of the womb

In Breaking News

2008-11-19T16:26:00.000-08:00

I am a spaz. That right there isn’t even worth blogging because it isn’t even news. I think strangers pick up on that fact just by looking at me for the first time. There was this though, it happened on Monday and made me laugh.

I ride my bike a lot; it’s pretty much my only mode of transportation. I ride it enough that I’m fairly competent and in good shape. I can, in short, haul some ass and am faster than most anyone I encounter on the roads in my daily travels. There are some though that are just as fast and even faster than I. I detest these people because they kick some switch in my brain located deep in the darkest most immature regions, and when this switch is hit my competitive side comes screaming out. I will tax my body to its limits to ensure one of these equally fast or faster cyclists stays behind me or I’ll go slightly beyond my limits just to pass them. Then once I pass them I tap into some stupid lactic acid burning zone that I hate. Don’t get me wrong I like winning, I love passing people and smoking them, that’s all totally great, but I also like a nicely paced ride that doesn’t make me sort of feel like vomiting when I get off the bike (this is admittedly a rare occurrence but it does happen).

In somewhat related news, well it will be soon just hold tight, I got a new bike light called the Flare 5. This, presumably because it has, count them, one, two, three, four, five, LED’s. I like this light. One of its features is that rather than just pointing light straight ahead it also allows for some diffuse light around the sides.

On Monday I was riding and a guy, one of these as fast or faster folks, arrived at a red light after me. One look at him and I knew it was on. One look at him and I also realized there was no way I wanted to lose to him, this mainly because he was wearing glasses. I hate dudes that wear glasses when they ride their bike. I wear glasses but I do not ride them when I ride. This is an irrational hang up that I think I’m unable to explain, but just know it draws a serious ire from me to see a dude wearing glasses while riding a bike. The light turned green and off I went. He also has a bike light which I can see to the left of my bike on the pavement we were flying over. It was close which meant he was sucking my tire. We did this for awhile him matching my accelerations and finally in both an effort to get to where I was going, but also just ditch this asshole, I took a right and zigzagged until I got stuck at another light. Now who would you guess rolls up behind me? It did just dawn on me, as I’m typing this, that I took a very indirect route to this light and he rolled up some 30 seconds later. Good for me for gapping him by 30 seconds. Anyway, we wait for the light to turn green and when it does we’re off again. I’m really hammering a hard pace as his light is not abating from its spot to the left of my bike. As I’m racing I realize that his light is synced up with the pulsing from my light. I think about this for a second and then experimentally put my hand over my light. His light goes out. I remove my hand and his light reappears. I do this two more times and realize the only person I’ve been racing, maybe for this whole ride, was myself.

Well what more did you want

Interestingly Enough It Is A Tumor

2008-11-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

Tumor zits. First just a preamble; I hate zits. I view them as a blight on my face. That’s actually how I mentally refer to them as. This is odd considering this face isn’t going to win any prizes and if any face could withstand a blight or two why not mine? But then I also dislike imperfection and a zit certainly makes me face less “perfect.” The flipside is I like popping a good zit. For me that’s a victory. I’m not sure who I’m winning over, I mean, zits are still born from me. I guess we could go down this rabbit hole for awhile but I’d rather not.

Tumor zits are what I call those zits that are uber zits. They exist way down in the subcutaneous layers of the skin. They are large, they hurt worse than a normal zit, and wear out their welcome pretty quickly. For whatever reason they only crop up between my eyes and on or near my nose, these being two of the more painful places to get zits in my experience. When one appears it starts with a feeling of tightness in the area. I’ll inspect my face in a mirror and I’ll see the beginnings of a large zit. No good I’ll think. Then over the course of about a week or so I’ll touch it constantly checking its hardness, they are always very hard feeling, anxiously waiting when popping day will come. Only with tumor zits it seems as though popping day never comes. After about 6 days of this I get antsy and attempt pop number one. This usually just ends up with me not popping the zit and my eyes watering, I leave the bathroom in disappointment. The next day or so I’ll make another attempt. It is usually here where everything goes wrong for me. I’ll commence popping but invariably what I consider to be the epic-center of the zit, the very crater of this flesh volcano, remains unchanged. All around it in upwards of three different spots my face will forcefully ooze bits of pus, blood and then water, from what could be called parasitic cones, but do nothing to relieve the pressure from the tumor zit itself. More and more squeezing will just yield water with a yellow tint. Aghast, all my efforts for nothing.

Well not nothing. The result of my overly eager pop attempts always leaves the tumor zit area with scabs. Bright red scabs that are easily seen by all. Whereas before I had a pinkish colored bump that may not be readily recognized as a zit I’m now dealing with face scabs. These I hate more than the zit I’ve been battling for the better part of a two weeks.

As I inspect my face daily and attempt to remove the scabs, which, as with all scab picking, just delays the healing process, the zit rests, nay grows, unabated. Typically I will wait another 4 to 5 days before a third pop attempt. This tertiary attempt almost always happens away from a bathroom. It will be as I’m toying with it, testing its popability, at my desk, in a store, on the couch. Then pop goes the zit and I rush to the closest mirror/bathroom to finish the little bugger off. Once I get in the bathroom or to a mirror I’m always disappointed by the lack of juices that I’ve finally forced from the depths of my face. This is what I’ve been waiting for? When I’m done the tumor zit doesn’t even appear any smaller than before.

One of the most epic tumor zits I’ve ever had stayed around for a few months. It never crested my skin but sat, lurking, beneath the surface. He was to the right of my nose and about an inch below my eye, situated in the crease between my nose and the cheek. It got to the point where I had assumed he’d be with me forever. I took him to the movies and we sat waiting to take in what was the abortion of a film called X-Men III something, something, and something. I played with him as I had been for the better part of two months when suddenly, with the just the tiniest bit of squeezing, the great dam that was my skin broke and behind this dam came poring out vast quantities of pus and blood. Stuck, with the movie just starting, and in the dark, it was impossible to gauge what has happening to my face. I steadfastly refused to leave the movie but instead just squeezed my poor face. The blood and other fluids had to go somewhere right? With no napkins available the next best place was naturally my jeans. So a wiping I went. About half an hour later my buddy was all done and beginning to coagulate. When I left the movie theater and finally got into some light I looked at my jeans where I had been wiping. They had a surprising amount of blood wiped on them. It may have, no joke, behind getting stitches in my head as a kid, the time I bleed the most. Surprisingly enough my jeans washed more or less clean. I miss that tumor zit.

These battles with tumor zits happen about every other month. You’d think by now I’ve matured enough that I know that waiting it out is my best course of action. Only all the above is direct proof I’m not.

I will turn this car right back around

I Was Saying Boooo-urns

2008-11-17T14:16:00.000-08:00

There will be no blog of substance today. The reason being I’m not at the right (my) desk or using the proper keyboard. This keyboard is one of your standard straight keyboards which I loathe. The longer I type on this blasted thing the sorer my wrists will get, my shoulders will also tighten. It’s happening already. I’m here because someone called in sick. The circumstances of this calling in are quite in doubt and the whole thing feels rather pre-mediated. This naturally annoys me because I don’t believe in calling in sick.

Now the upside to this is that while cover at this other desk the only to really do is read which means I am chugging towards the conclusion of Gravity’s Rainbow. With any luck I’ll be within 100 pages of the end by today’s conclusion.

I have nothing more to add and simply want to stop using this keyboard. Tune in tomorrow where I’ll discuss Tumor Zits assuming I’m not covering here again.

Hand jobs for everyone

The Ruinator

2008-11-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

I like to ruin people’s days. That’s a bullish comment I know. It isn’t that as I sit in my seat at Blazer games, which is located on the aisle, and slap people’s 8 dollar beers out of their hands onto the people around me. Though I’ll freely admit that is really very tempting. I’m also not going around to grocery stores in August and removing people’s watermelons from their shopping carts holding them, the watermelons, aloft before smashing them to the ground. Specifically I like to ruin the day of other assholes. Two vignettes will serve as my example.

After the first Blazer preseason game I and about 7 other people deboarded the MAX at the Lloyd Center. The group of us walked towards the Lloyd Cinemas parking lot where I’m assuming most of my cohorts had parked for free. We waited like good citizens for the crosswalk to flash the inviting white light of walk. When that finally happened we proceeded through the crosswalk except for this, a car, so anxious to get to where it was going, had been caught out in the intersection in no man’s land. I saw this develop before it happened and was mad. The car proceeded to cut off me and most of the other people in the crosswalk in what amounted to him running a red light. This further angered me and I ran up to the back of the car and slapped his rear tail light hard with my hand. I continued to walk on contented with my behavior. The person, a man, far from any sort of contentment with my actions, stopped the car and eventually tracked me down in the parking lot where this following exchange took place.

Him: Why did you hit my car?
Me: Because you ran a red light, you don’t run red lights.
Him: Did you not see the person in front you wave me forward?
Me: I don’t give too shits what he did, he doesn’t control the world, don’t run red lights.
Him: Don’t hit other people’s property!
Me: Oh, did I damage your car in any way, no I didn’t.
Him: Don’t hit other people’s property!
Me: Oh Okay old man I won’t. But don’t run reds.

He was little taken a back at this point. I said the old man line in such a mocking and condescending tone that he was unsure how to proceed.

Him: Well don’t ever hit my car again

He then began to walk away but not before I could yell at him “I won’t, and hey, go fuck yourself you old codger!”

Pretty self satisfied I walked back to Ash’s car pretty much laughing the whole way home.

Number two happened today.

It was cold out this morning. The kind lady on the radio told me it was 43 degrees outside. I thought hey “43 with clear skies, I’ll wear my winter jacket.” Which I did, and it was great, but the jacket also features two vents, one for each forearm. Last time I wore the jacket those vents were left opened but I wanted them shut because of the aforementioned coolness. Well these zippers are tiny and pretty hard to open or shut when wearing big winter gloves which I was also doing. I took a chance and removed the gloves at a stoplight in an attempt to zip up the zippers. Well wouldn’t you know it, I fumbled, then panicked, and before I knew it the light was very green and there I was still trying to get the glove back on my right hand properly. This simple act of uncoordinated garment adjustment made the large truck behind me honk their horn. Incidentally those horns are actually pretty loud when you aren’t in another car. Finally I clipped in and proceeded. The truck, annoyed with the delay I had caused, and antsy to get going made an aggressive move to get around me, we were both taking a right, and he sort of almost hit me as I needed to merge from the right lane to the left lane before taking a left onto another side street. I both heard and saw him make this move so I swerved to stay in my lane and waited for him to pass but as he passed I made sure to flip him off. Of course, since he’s a big truck, he took exception to that and he stops to yell a few choice words at me only the idiot isn’t actually directing his mouth towards me and I can’t hear a word he’s saying. I can see his face reflected in his mirror and he looks pissed but as for what awesome witticisms were directed towards me those are lost to the wind. I answered back with my standard “go fuck yourself” but then also added “and go commit suicide!” I’m sure much like his hate speech my words were also lost to the wind, but I like to pretend that maybe he heard me. I rode on smiling the whole way.

This brings me back to my point. I genuinely like to piss off and potentially ruin a person’s day. Not just anyone but the type of people that get mad at me enough when I flip them off that they stop their car for a confrontation, or the person that runs a red and then is mad at me when I hit their car benignly. I dislike this type of person and I’m happy to make them mad. I’m happy at the thought that my words and actions may linger with them for the rest of the day. That they may go home and complain about it to their wife, roommate, or whatever. My actions and words may carry beyond the moment they existed in. They also may not, I acknowledge that, but I have learned that people like to stay mad. I like all of that. Why? Because I too am an asshole, I know this, but I feel very much like a righteous asshole that only acts out against those that deserve it. I’m probably wrong. This is probably a trait of mine that further proves I’ve never actually grown up and I’m still the same immature wiener I was in middle school.

On a programming note, while I endeavor to update this daily I’m pretty sure that will only hold true for Monday through Friday. One the great things about this blog versus the other I used to maintain on MySpace is I can type away while I have time at work and then edit (yes, I know it sure doesn’t seem like I edit, but I do) and post later in the day when things slow down. MySpace being blocked at work makes it pretty hard update a blog from here. I find it nearly impossible these days to sit down in front of my computer long enough at home to compose a blog. I have too many books to read or games to play to waste time any other way. Not like I really expect anyone to be excitedly hitting the refresh button every day even during the weekends but I figured I’d give the three of you a heads up.

Missions Volume One

2008-11-13T13:50:00.000-08:00

I’ve set about doing a few missions. Normally they’d be called goals but I like missions better because it makes it sound all sci-fi. Missions are good to have and publically posting them, even if only one person reads them, is better because it holds me accountable. I’ll be listing my missions from most plausible to least plausible.

Mission One: Don’t drink for 30 days.
Rationale: In short I’ve been drinking too much. I was tipped off to this fact when I finished a fifth of vodka by myself in two days. I do a few things when drunk that I’d like to curb. The main thing being I eat food I don’t need to eat. I’ll drink and then think, “Hey I need to eat so that I’m not all hung over tomorrow.” Then I open up the flood gates and eat, eat, eat. The eating then leads to the spins and I know of but one way to deal with the spins; I puke. Not only do I eat food I don’t need I then puke it up. This is just a waste of resources. Plus when I drink I typically forego brushing me teeth and wake up feeling gross as a result. Drunk Mark, if anything, is a slob. Oh and don’t even get my started on Drunk Mark the conversationalist. He just yammers on and on and on about things that Sober Mark doesn’t talk about, namely the various girls he’s been rejected by and why each rejection bugs him. He, Drunk Mark, also really has to focus on not contacting a certain girl in particular. Though to his credit Sober Mark isn’t totally convinced contacting her is a bad idea so he absolves Drunk Mark for the most part. In sum, I may stop drinking for more than 30 days if I feel like that’s a better choice.

Mission Two: Do one hundred (100) consecutive push ups.
Rationale: I was Stumbling through the internet via the powers of StumbleUpon and found a training program with the goal being to do 100 consecutive push ups. Even as I was a fat college kid I liked doing push ups. I’m fairly competent in the art of push ups and doing 100 of them in a row without a break seems like a pretty good thing to spend my time trying to achieve.

Mission Three: Finish Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow before January 1st.
Rationale: I’ve been reading this book since the end of last January. It sits at my desk at work mocking me. Granted I haven’t actually picked it up since sometime in September. At this point I don’t even know what is happening in the book, though it isn’t like I ever really did. It is a complex book that does a feature a linear narrative but just in the most basic sense of the concept. In reality the book is like a narrative poem. Each page features brilliant word play and imagery. Getting through it would be a pretty big accomplishment considering I’ve started the book three times over the last four years.

Mission Four: No longer pursue girls at work.
Rationale: It was pointed out to me by Jacob that the pool in which I attempt to date from is decidedly small given the fact that pretty much all of them are co-workers. He’s right, also after four years of working here both as a facilities schmuck and as janitor I’ve come up empty every single time I’ve gone to that well. Though, in truth, no one wants to date the janitor so I consider two years, or half my tenure, to not really count. I’m not doing this because I’m smart in the sense that dating someone from work can cause complications because I’m fairly convinced I’m immune, given my position, from those problems. No, rather I just concede that Jacob is right and to continually make half-assed attempts makes very little sense. The caveat to all of this is of course should one of them ask me out who am I to do turn down such an offer?

Mission Five: Speak slower and enunciate better.
Rationale: I talk fast and I mumble. It gets very frustrating for me when people ask me to repeat myself yet I understand that this is largely my fault and my anger is misplaced. This has been a life long issue, but what has prompted me to address the problem is that I’ve been led to understand that I was, in part, rejected by a girl because my speech cadence is weird and I talk too fast. This sort of baffles me, but I understand where she might be coming from. Talking fast is often associated with lack of confidence and nerves. Now for the record I neither lacked confidence nor was nervous around this girl despite the fact that she’s frankly much too good looking for me to even realistically have a chance with, but regardless it seems like attempting to slow down my speech might be helpful in all aspects of life.

Mission Six: Get a date, or date, Rebecca Haarlow.
Rationale: Rebecca Haarlow. for those that don’t know, is the Trail Blazers sideline reporter for their television broadcasts. She’s what I’d term foxy; I actually think she’s the bee’s knees. She’s a Princeton graduate and ran track there. This makes me conclude that she’s educated and athletic. Now I’d like to naturally just concede that I understand that she looks to stand about 5-10 flat footed and is prone to wearing heels so she’s really like 6-1 or so. I’m shorter than that. I’m still waiting on my growth spurt but I think I may have reached my maximum height. She also went to Princeton as stated so she’s educated, I’m smart but she’s educated there’s a difference there. In essence I simply can’t hang with Rebecca Haarlow. I know this as do all of my friends. But here’s the rub; I’m a Trail Blazer season ticket holder (it literally never gets old saying that) and I’m in the same room as her 41 times in the next 8 months. OK never mind that the “room” is an arena and I have no access to the same places she has access to. My tickets are situated so that I can gaze upon the back of her head all game long. I’m just one stiflingly silent moment with a megaphone to being able to ask if she’d like to get coffee sometime.

Well I Think I'm Losing My Mind This Time

2008-11-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

Well I Think I'm Losing My Mind This Time

This Time I'm Losing My Mind

That's Right, Said I Think I'm Losing My Mind This Time

This Time I'm Losing My Mind

Ahh, The Beastie Boys, it just feels right when you get to quote them so aptly. Wait, what? OK here’s the deal; I think I’m actually losing my mind a bit. I’ll try to explain it as best I can.

When I was working in warehouse for the fifth time, the time after the time I loudly told anyone I’d never be back, I began to simply forget things there is no way I should ever forget. At one point it took me 20 minutes of hard thought to remember LeBron James’ first name. It was simple stuff like that that had me convinced I was the victim early onset Alzheimer’s. For further back history, ever single one of my grandparents suffered from Alzheimer’s minus my grandfather on my mom’s side who was cut down by cancer before (hypothetically) the Alzheimer’s could hit. This fact alone makes me fairly convinced I’m genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s. When my mind started going wonky on me at the warehouse I assumed the worst. I was legitimately scared for about 4 months that my life was over as I knew it. That probably sounds a little melodramatic to which I have no excuse other than nothing in my head seemed right and that really frightened me. I then got hired on at my current job and one day, just like magic, everything was right again in my head. I was confused and relieved and chalked the whole thing up to the stress of working a job I hated, while driving 1.5 hours a day, and supporting a deadbeat roommate spiraling me into a debt that took me two years to get out of.

But of course that can’t be the whole story as there’d be not reason to blog that some two years late. And you’re right. My mind is acting funny once again. What is happening (or has been happening for about 5 months) is that words are not being perceived correctly in my brain. The most typical manifestation of this is a phone call. When someone calls me and starts talking most of the time I will literally have no clue what the person is saying. I’ll understand there are words being said and I’ll recognize most of the words but not the sentences the person is constructing with those words. I’ve found that if I can just hold on for about 20 seconds things sort of snap into focus and I’m pretty much okay from then on out. The extra tricky part is I hate being asked to repeat myself and I extend that courtesy, of not asking people to repeat themselves, to the people I talk to. Should I not understand something I don’t do the smart thing and ask for them to repeat themselves I just hope the conversation lasts long enough that I’ll finally understand what they are saying. Just this week alone I’ve pretty much okayed two things I’m not really sure what they were. There have been a few instances where I’ve asked the person “does that make any sense?” The question wasn’t being asked because I was worried my logic or rationale was not being followed. No, I was actually worried that the words I had just spoken where nonsensical and I had just verbalized a string of words that were more or less gibberish. I’m not 100% sure this is a brain issue and not a hearing issue as my ears aren’t as good as they should as a result of the metal I like to listen to at loud volumes. But since this seems to happen regardless of the speaker’s volume I’m feeling like it is likely a mental issue and not an aural issue. Oh, and I have a theory why this only happens over the phone and not in person. I think it has something to do with me not being able to see lips move over the phone. This of course doesn’t account for why I have no problems understanding people when I’m not looking directly at them, but whatever, it’s the best I’ve come up with.

The other, and new way, this has cropped up is sometimes I simply can’t read. Now this is sort of fun because I’ll sit there and try and read an article online and my eyes read the text but all I comprehend is a wash of words with no order. I really don’t have much more to add to that other than it makes reading things really hard and it is vaguely annoying.

I’ve done some online research like you’ve probably expected I would and learned almost nothing. What I have learned is that I may have a problem and if it is the problem I may have I’m boned. In fact for most any of these types of mental issues the take home message is of total boneage. At one point I stumbled upon the right word combination when searching Google and found a whole list of potential issues I may have. I’ve naturally forgotten that word combination and given I feel like I already learned what I needed I haven’t really tried since. What I do know is that this problem, if it is my problem, is largely unaccounted for and can clear up one day for no discernible reason. That’s what I’m counting on.

So from all of this we’ve learned that either I have a real mental problem or I’m a crazy hypochondriac neither of which would surprise me. I was at one point worried I had rectal cancer. Hey, you try pooping blood for like a week and not get worried. If you notice things are amiss with me well you know why. I can’t really control it at this point so just bear with me I guess. Also, this is probably one of the most private blogs I’ve ever composed but I figured giving everyone their due warning is only fair.

Bla'Zers

2008-11-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

Today kids we turn towards the whiny and inconsequential. I’m a die-hard Portland Trail Blazers fan. Hey, I can understand anyone’s need to refer to the Trail Blazers by a shorter name. This is why we have all accepted Blazers, as in, “I’m going to the Blazers game to tonight” “Let’s go Blazers!” or “Hey how about them Blazers?” What is totally unforgiveable is the new shortening I’ve seen crop up on three different sites now. For the record those three sites would be the magnificent BlazersEdge, Oregon Live’s Blazer Blog, and also a Facebook status update. What I’m naturally referring to is the use of ‘Zers in place of Blazers. Are you kidding me? ‘Zers? This is an abomination. It is neither hard nor difficult to say or type Blazers. What’s even more troubling is that there is no apostrophe in sight when I see ‘Zers in text. The apostrophe of course being fairly important because it denotes where letters are missing in word in the case of a contraction. Well these fools are contracting Blazers to ‘Zers and also leaving out the apostrophe which makes it both a totally dumbass shortening but also grammatically incorrect. This is all I have on this topic other than if anyone refers to the Blazers as ‘Zers in your presence please do your absolute best to humiliate that person and make them feel bad about themselves, it is truly the only way they will learn.

Spam Blog

2008-11-04T16:12:00.000-08:00

Afternoon Farts, really? That’s what you’re going to call this? OK easy there new/old readers let’s get the first thing totally clear, I’m a puerile idiot. If you expect anything different prepare to be disappointed.

The main reason why this completely forced blog is being composed is Google, in their infinite wisdom, has labeled this newly founded blog a Spam Blog. A concept I understand but don’t totally understand why they’d be so vigilant about policing new blogs, or old blogs, or whatever. I founded this blog literally 23 hours ago. I do apologize that I didn’t start gabbing like a 13-year-old who just got her own phone in her room. Total aside, remember those days? When parents got so annoyed with the dearth of phone calls for their kids that they just paid more money to put a phone in the kid’s room? I think it stems form the parents feeling inadequate. Why weren’t their friends calling them multiple times a day to discuss the picayune events of the day? Then of course cell phones came along and that all changed. But anyway, I figure I’d better post a little something so when the person who’s job it is to read these things and determine which is Spam Blog and which isn’t (sounds like a pretty good job really) they can say “well it may be poorly written, and total drivel, but that’s neither here nor there as I’ve determined that these words have been typed my a living breathing human being.” Thanks for making that call Spam Blog verifier.

I really do need to wrap this up as I need to get on my bike and ride out to the Oregon Food Bank for some non-court ordered volunteering. I sure hope we aren’t doing carrots this week.