Thought Chasm

Archive for June, 2008

Do. Co. rehashing:

Monday, June 30th, 2008

we interrupt our irregularly scheduled “monday movies” in favor of a rundown of my weekending adventures not adventurous. Apologies to the MonMov fans, we’ll be back next week in full grandeur with maybe a look at Teeth, one missed call or the baxter.

As mentioned read: over-emphasized; redundantly repeated in the two posts on Friday, I was in Door County, WI for the weekend. I feel like I just came out of a drug-induced coma where NKOTB was pumped into my ears, leinie’s was pumped into my veins and I was painted a dark pink by some unruly candy-stripers. It was awesome. Pictures will be in the usual place sometime this week.

Friday, I had the half-day duh and helped DC pick up his new ride from the shop and get his plates. We finally ducked out of town about 4p after meeting up with the third member of our traveling party. Traffic was mint, rain was minimal and, after a stop in Thorp, we were in Do.Co. at about 10.30p.

We stopped in at Ray’s, chilled with a few Summer Shandies¹, listened to the new NKOTB single ~~way too many~~ a number of times and then headed out to JJ’s with a few additions to our number. It was slow because of a show on the other side of the penninsula so we headed over to the Bowl for a gigantic pitcher of Honeyweiss it’s three pitchers big.

Our group at the bar fluctuated in size like a stressed out blowfish. DC and RS went back early, some more locals showed up and a few others left relatively early. It ended up with just Ray, LA and I staggering back up the hill to the apartment in a light rain. I crashed hard on the air mattress still wearing my jeans and socks.

Saturday, we went down to Good Egg² for egg burritos before resting at the beach for most of the afternoon. I baked like a rump roast in a Showtime Rotisserie. set it… and forget it! Then it was off to Wilson’s for a scoop of ice cream³ and back to Ray’s to wait for Ooh-a-sliver.

We stopped at Fred & Fuzzy’s for a couple drinks and some appetizers and then up to the Shoreline for dinner. We crashed a 50th birthday party at the AC Tap, were back at JJ’s before we knew it and then later hit up the Bowl for some more drink. After bar close, we went over to an after-bar. It was a pleasure drinking a Bud Light⁴ under the watchful eye of the bigger-than-life-size Brett Favre cutout pasted to the wall. I was thoroughly saturated.

With Sliver as our DD we got back to the apartment sometime after 4a. Ray baked up some cheesy bread⁵ while I watched the sunrise from her deck. I ate four or five slices and passed out, this time in full dress, including shoes.

Sunday started off slow, but we were at Carroll House for breakfast about 11.30a. We took off from there. With a stop in Appleton and Steven’s Point, we were back in town about 9p. It was a long, relaxing weekend. Much thanks for Ray in being a gracious host and to DC/RS for driving.

Random asides:
—slutty burritos
—NKOTB “Summertime” repeated incessantly
—too many references to Jesus related: spontaneous singing of “Awesome God”
—”Yeah, cause you’re cool.” response to bartender yelling for bar close
—bald, andrew-zimmern-looking guy with glasses and a mustache that came to waxed points on either side of his nose

Now I need to focus for three days of work before another long weekend back in the hometown.

1. Summer Shandy is a hellish concoction of beer, Minute-Maid Lemonaide and the liquefied souls of recently executed serial killers. It hit my tongue like a giant mallet at a “Test Your Manliness” carnival game and then gripped it like a shop vice before vomiting ultra-lemon down my throat in a horrifying torrent. Who the hell puts lemonade into beer? short answer: Godless heathens.

2. The burrito was egg, joy, sausage, potatoes, and a grandmother’s love for her first granddaughter wrapped in a warm tortilla sprinkled with delicious. It sat heavy and proud within me and ingesting it was probably the best thing I’ve done with my live since learning to read.

3. “Scoop” here is used as a vague descriptor. What really appeared before me in a Styrofoam dish was a Native-burial-mound sized pile of frozen caramel awesome. There were caramel swirls and chocolate covered caramel and I-don’t-know-what-else, but really it just ended up being a bitch-slap of flavor that left me wondering if I had ever really felt love before.

4. Or I should say “trying to drink.” The thing sat on the coffee table for only a few minutes before being knocked over twice by other party-goers. I guess someone didn’t want me chugging the rice beer. On a less cosmic note, maybe it’s because it sucks?

5. It was more of a cheese pizza without the sauce and enough garlic flavor to kill off a vampire from sixty yards. The after-taste in the morning was almost tangible. If I would have scarfed down a couple hand-fulls of Cool Rance Doritos with the cheese bread, I’d have appeared on an NSA report as a biological weapon.

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goodbye cruel world

Friday, June 27th, 2008

It’s amazing how a half-day will so impressively affect a mood. Like, mine, for instance the only instance. As mentioned in the Free For All, I’m out of here at now noon, CDT; GMT-6. Just look at how my reactions have changed:

It’s cloudy and rain is likely on the way… Yesterday: Are you shitting me? More fucking rain and time spent sitting on my ass? Today: Who gives a fuck? I’m out of here.

I’ve about 1.73 million things to do today and have spent the last hour installing and validating fonts… Yesterday: I’ll be pulling my hair out metaphorically and people will launch into a bunch of shit and I’ll end up with more to do and I’ll vomit blood all over my slick new lapbook and have to pay for a new one while my ear bleeds. Today: So what? I’m out of here.

See what I mean? I feel like Macaulay Culkin in My Girl when he was all happy and in love with that chick that no one remembers Anna Chlumsky, people; keep that one for a round of “SceneIt: 90s; you’re welcome. Sure, he was stung a BAZillion! times and showed up on her table all corpsey, but for those few cinematic moments he could have shit a shining, gold turd of joy that would have left the old folk in Cacoon wishing they knew true happiness.

But yeah, that’s where I’m at. I’m sure most or all of you are working ’til the usual time and don’t want to hear me rant further about how I’m walking on toddler hugs and chugging contentment out of an over-sized mug of kiln-fired teen love, so I’ll leave you with a verdict from the Supreme Court or what used to be supreme, before the monarchy and what not.

“… from a donkey to a snake eating its own tale” … hilarious.

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friday free for all

Friday, June 27th, 2008

… I’m leaving at noon today, making my way to the lakehouse and then off to Door County until Sunday. I’m more than a little excited to get the hell out of here even if the weather’s not supposed to be all that awesome.

A warning, I’ve been frustrated lately and have paid attention to certain things I usually attempt to avoid. The following are not the usual poorly written musings about my day-to-day or clips of people acting like jack-asses depending on your perspective. But, whoop whoop to being out of town the next two weekends!

… I didn’t pay close attention to his work, but a few shining moments stood out. This is one of them. His voice and the comedic viewpoint it vocalized will be missed.

… The “Liberal” media is on a roll. Last week, Limbaugh pretty sure he was at Woodstock ’69 took a swing at black Katrina victims and O’Reilly I’m almost certain he petitioned to have the US sign the Kyoto treaty took a break from “relaxing on all the gay stuff” and got confused over a new Heinz ad in the UK. Monday, Imus if I’m correct, he was arrested in 2003 at an anti-war rally with a “no war 4 oil” sign dry-humped being a racist prick again by making a “sarcastic point.”

If only we had strong, intolerant, moral voices in this sea of liberal bias. How can we truly return to our Christian roots that were expressly written out of the Constitution when so many people with such loud voices put all their energy to furthering the hippie cause? vote mccain!

… What do you think about off-shore drilling? Seriously. From what I gather in small snippets, it’s been unanimously opposed until very recently. The impact and benefit won’t be seen for almost a decade and will have little effect on gasoline prices.

Why are proponents on the right touting a false claim that China is drilling off our coasts? Why all the pressure to start the drilling now? Do you think it’ll make a difference that outweighs the ecological destruction? Will it bring about those $20 barrels of oil that Rupe was talking about?

When someone who has received more than $330k from the oil and gas industries is taken seriously even slightly spouting a speech like this, you have to wonder where things will go from here.

… Take this with as much weight as you see fit, but this video about a lawyer for some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is interesting. If the numbers he mentions are near accurate, our nation is on a long voyage atop a ship with a big hole in it’s hull. Does KBR build ships? Nothing good can come from this.

… and finally:
A while back there were some folk that filed suit against the makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. yah, I know; when was that? the 80s? The game, using third party software or hardware known to only a small number of folk, had sex scenes programmed into it. Some of you will be entertained by this article.

Turns out, even though millions of people purchased, played and replaced the game, only 2,676 got on board as being offended by the scenes. The lawyers brought a ridiculous lawsuit, are now dumbfounded that so few people give a shit and are asking for over $1.3 million in legal fees. The American dream!

My favorite part is toward the end. Take a second to read from “if the case goes to trial…” and come on back. I’ll still be here, like a reassuring parent or drug dealer. After reading it, I recapped the entire “ninja star” episode of South Park specifically the last 2 minutes.

I can’t wait to be a parent. I’ll bring him along to 17+ action movies when he’s twelve and buy him games rated for mature audiences when he turns fourteen. Of course, I’ll restrict his internet and television access for fear he’ll see a boob or hear a naughty word. If he has a friend who somehow hacks into a game, with unaffiliated software, and finds pixelated sex, I’ll sue the game for his college fund. Violence without consequence and sexual repression for everyone!!

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haha

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

[via]

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rough shape

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Just a few months after reaching the mid-twenties, I’m feeling closer to thirty. Which, we can all agree, is OLD! To illustrate my point, I’ll outline my minor ailments with exaggerated metaphors, analogies and descriptions that will maybe leave your mind as cloudy and muffled as mine. enjoy!

Neck up:
My brain seems to have packed a small weekending bag with a change of clothes and some essential supplies in the wee hours of the morning, leaving before I woke with no emergency contact and his cell laying on the dresser. I can’t put ideas together and feel like the zombies from Shaun of the Dead look.

I have a slight sinus headache that has me groggy and uninterested. That’s not an issue. I get them all the time. But then I bit my tongue. Not in the sense that I have a hole in it or there’s a large part of it spit onto the ground somewhere near Lake Minnetonka or anything, but I must have bitten down on about half of it. There’s a marble of pain lodged on the right side of my mouth. It hurts to swallow and talk. which I do. a. LOT.

Neck to Waist:
I was home sick yesterday. I didn’t do much of anything, but wandered to the deck to read and get some fresh air. My shoulders are sun burnt and my backpack like some sort of smart bomb of hate rests directly on the worst of it. I know most of you have had sunburns before because your absent minded and just want a little color so I’ll just say it feels like being massaged by Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands and leave it at that.

I went tubing a couple times on Sunday. This is incredibly enjoyable don’t have to stand or balance or focus; just hold on and pray, but there are a few effects brought on by that cause I could live without.

First, I’m pretty sure I did 3,000 push-ups in my sleep Sunday night odd, I don’t remember taking Ambien… because it can’t just be that I was pulled at 30mph on a barely-friction-affected inflatable device. It obviously could and certainly is.

Second, when my arms were getting tired and I adjusted grip, I dug my elbows into the textured pads of the tube. This scraped the flesh down to the bone and, considering the cleanliness of the water, almost assuredly infected me with something science has yet to discover, much less cure.

Waist down:
My left knee is burnt. My right knee is slightly pink. That is all. The rest of the flesh on my legs is the familiar near-translucent pale that is the usual. It looks as strange as it sounds, trust me. The tubing or more specifically the water rushing at 18-36mph across them bruised the inside of both my knees.

I took a dive off a wave-runner on Sunday, too. I know; fun day at the lake right? totally. Using “dive” there makes it seem slightly intentional so let me stop to reassure you that it was completely unexpected and horrifically disorienting like a kindergartner lost in a meat packing plant or a sexually indescriminent barely-legal lost in the woods around a cabin retreat.

I took a turn at roughly… given the wind speed, calmness of the water below me and the strength of the motor… 82.7mph give or take 60mph. Centrifical force kneed me in the groin and I was immediately upside-down in the water with my feet still on the seat of the wave-runner above me and the motor idling. I don’t know how I did it either.

From what I’ve been able to gather after the incident through exhaustive research, eye-witness reports and a careful examination to the damage, here’s what happened:

I was thrown thirty feet in the air, a monster of a man named Charity, dressed in sleeveless flannel and chaps laid waste to my left shin with an iron pipe and then I fell sixty feet at terminal velocity. I landed left shin first on the handle bars of the wave-runner before falling backward, head first, into the water beside it. All without snapping the safety cord from the clip.

To sum up, I’m burnt in a number of odd places to a painful degree, have a headache that is leaving me as intellectually clear as a puddle at the lowest point of a Wal-Mart parking lot after a light rain and can’t touch my left leg without screeching like a provoked bird of prey or 4-year-old in dire need of a nap. I can’t kneel, swallow, stand straight or sit comfortably. It’s not good, people, is all I’m saying.

Things are looking up, though. The day at the lake was actually quit awesome and I finally made it to Sea Salt for some dinner after it’s ridiculous delicious. I’ve a half day Friday for a trip to Door County and then a short week with a trip back to the hometown for the holiday weekend. I’m laying low this week in recovery. Please send condolences in the form of cash to the lakehouse, not to the office; it would spark too many questions; much thanks.

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hurts

Friday, June 20th, 2008

I exit the train and see the bus waiting there. I, along with a few others, rush to step on before it leaves the stop. The wait for the next one is almost a half hour and unreliable.

I ignore most of the passengers—it’s busier than usual—and make my way toward the back. The National blares in my ears, drowning out much of the conversation around me, but I catch bits of the conversation next to me, between the man across and the man directly to my right.

The man across, dressed in a brown button-up shirt with short sleeves and matching slacks, talks loudly about his having to ride the train and bus back to his home. His son can’t pick him up because he works tomorrow. He’s as dumbfounded at his son’s explanation as I am.

He wears a gray cap, a beret with a bill facing forward, that sits high on his head and a fake silver watch. He holds a pair of cheap sunglasses in his hand. His hair is straggly and graying, the hat turned up enough to see a receding hairline. His eyes are glossy, almost distant. He looks drunk.

The man next to me, in an a-shirt and jean shorts, laughs boisterously and responds at a similar volume. He says Brown Shirt’s son should know what’s what. He laughs that Brown Shirt is left on the bus while his wife is home and his son uses his car.

I reach down and pause my music. I see Jean Shorts is wearing white Adidas sneakers with green detail. Even without the music, leaving my headphones on, I can’t understand much of the conversation.

“… Can’t file section eight with bad credit.”
“How long’s your son been working?”
“About four years —”
“That’s your credit right there…”

“…That’s what they say though, love hurts. Right?”
“Boy, don’t they! Sure does.”

Both men laugh as the woman says something. They start talking quickly, overlapping their words so I can’t understand either. Then the woman says something about priorities.

“When your wife says ‘priorities,’ what does she mean?” Brown Shirt asks.
“Love hurts,” replies Jean Shorts.
Brown Shirt looks up, a confused look on his face. He pauses a second and then smiles broadly. “Love hurts is right. I don’t know what it means neither, but you go to your first point. Love hurts.”

I reach back and pull the cord as the bus pulls within a couple blocks. Their conversation continues with Jean Shorts repeating “love hurts” incessantly. I put my book into my backpack and discreetly resume the music.

The bus slows. I stand and step out the side doors. My mind floods. What was just going on? Neither knew definitively what priorities were or how a phrase like “get your priorities” straight should be used. They were talking over one another without understanding. They both laughed enthusiastically when they thought they should, not knowing what either was saying.

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