Where my dog at?

It has been many months since we have been graced by Mystery’s presence. Without his ever-present guidance many of us have ventured into bars, flailing wildly in an attempt to dance and swooping into conversations like a wounded osprey only to be pathetically ignored by women and bartenders alike. Worry no more my friends, at long last our hoped for day is here. The return of The Pick Up Artist.

(For those wondering, my agent did a much better job for me this year. Made it to the third round of the casting process until I was disqualified for actually having a girlfriend at the time. Yes, my chance at international fame was squashed by they very thing I was trying to become famous for. Given that last year’s winner Kosmo was an actor and runner up Brady was a former model I didn’t think that I should be disqualified. Oh well, there is always season 3.)

After all this build up it’s time to meet the dweebs!

Episode 1: We fear what we do not understand

We start with the setup and get to see that Kosmo gets to travel the country sharing his tips on how to pick up women with men who pay several thousands dollars for weekend sessions in which they are taught these lessons. I’m not kidding on that front. I actually checked out Mystery’s website to see what these things cost. It is just nutty. Mystery is joined by his returning wingman Matador, who was the only one of the bunch last year that I would actually want to spend time at a bar with, and new wingwoman Tara, who gets promoted after gracefully allowing herself to be kissed by the contestants last season. Sadly J-Dog, my idol if just for his horrible black streaked hair, is nowhere to be seen this time around. It is never stated what has happened to J-Dog. I can only hope that he is somewhere nicer, using his day game expertise to his full advantage.

The setting has changed as well. We have moved to Arizona after spending last season in Austin. I’d consider this a much harsher environment for the contestants given that to my knowledge most of the people living in Arizona are senior citizens. However, it will provide a more level playing field than Austin as anyone could sit down in a coffee shop in Austin and pick up someone. It is why I was trying to move there but even though everyone calls it an up and coming city there are apparently zero jobs there. I had more interviews with companies in New Orleans than Austin.

And here come the geeks.
Todd: A 26 year old nice guy who falls into the “just friends” category with every woman he meets. He’s complaining about making no progress in life. Join the club.
Ryan: Is our 28 year old virgin from Portland. He’s never learned how to socialize and in his video from home he shows off one of his stuffed animals. Yowzers.
Simeon: Is one of those guys who freaks me out. 27, super hyper and was living on a houseboat. Is also the guy most likely to be asked if he is on crystal meth.
Karl: Is a 21 year old Radio Shack employee. I don’t think I need to go into any more detail than that. On the list of things you shouldn’t tell anyone is the fact that you work at Radio Shack.
Matt: Is self-conscious about his looks to a severe degree. True, the gap in the teeth is a slight issue but concerns about body hair? Dude, it’s called manscaping. Queer Eye made it acceptable like five years ago.
Greg: Has long hair and glasses and looks like the guy who ran your computer lab in college. His voice cracks around women.
Brian: Is 21 and has never kissed a girl. He is also wearing a Models Wanted t-shirt and when he gets nervous he spells out words so he doesn’t stutter. Maybe I am over-qualified for this show.
Kevin: Apparently is on the show because he is on a cold streak. I’m not sure if that means you need the help of a guy in a top hat. Maybe you just need to go to a different bar. Also, he looks like either Harold or Kumar. Take your pick.
Alex: Is our “women thinks he’s gay” contestant this year. With the Mr. T style gold chain, Elton John glasses and pink neon hat I’m stunned that this ever comes up in polite conversation.

Someone just referred to meeting Mystery as meeting Willy Wonka. I fear what the Oompa Loompas are like in his factory. Mystery has replaced the top hat for a cowbot hat though he still has the goggles. The Geek Squad is stunned upon meeting Mystery that they are forced to go into the club immediately. Apparently they all skipped last season’s opening episode.

Kevin goes first, makes a beeline to a table of women, throws out a line about digging deeper and crashes so hard the black box is unrecoverable. Matt actually makes friendly contact asking a girl what she is drinking but goes no farther than that. Just Friends Todd asks permission to ask a question to which the answer is most certainly no. Matador likes Greg’s look for some bizarre reason. His insulting Arizona tactic doesn’t work well on an Arizona native.

Brian actually does surprisingly well. Sure, he struck out (you don’t ask what type of toothpaste someone uses) but he at least made a decent conversation. Simeon is aptly described as the annoying creepy guy who makes you wonder what he is on at the moment. Rian, (apparently he lost a y in the process) looks worse than I did at 28. Given that many people reading this know what I looked like that is rather frightening. Karl starts a conversation and then has the woman’s friend actually ask “Why are you talking to him?” Ooh, that is where I would make a pithy remark. Or would at least think of one four hours later. Alex has women yank his proverbial chain as well as his literal one but can’t even use that to make conversation and ends up being the weird quiet guy wearing an enormous gold chain.

So after the strikeouts now Mystery goes in to do it. Hatless, no less. I really need to see if he can work without his hat. He still does magic tricks though. Matador immediately starts getting some because he is freaking Matador. All he has to do is go “I’m the Matador!” and women fall all over him. Anyway, all this leads to is pictures of the geeks in the control room cheering the fact that Mystery is about to get laid, which is really creepy when you think about it.

We then move on to avatar creation time and sadly not in Everquest though I think some contestants would prefer that route. I’m actually curious about this as I am in the midst of rethinking my look. I think a new town deserves a new look. One that shows that I’m 35 with a good job and that I have my shit together. Advice welcome as always.

Brian (who has what can only be called the oddest hair ever) goes for a gangster look and Rian is having serious issues with shopping. Yes, shopping for clothes has this guy near tears. Dude, stop crying. What would your Dungeon Master say if he saw you like this? Matt, in what has to be a first for a reality show, is sent to a dental surgeon to get his teeth fixed. Greg loses the angsty poet ponytail, numerous guys get pierced (which I would never do) and Matt finally gets waxed, which I could have told him to do. They all show off their new looks and dang, Greg did an awesome job in no longer looking like he is studying a Linux manual. Matt, in a wonderful bit of editing, seems to have had all of his dental issues solved in an afternoon without any pain whatsoever.

In a big shock, one of the contestants is judged to be not ready for this before the contest even starts. Wow, talk about a kick in the balls. You apply for a show because you are a loser who can’t meet women. You make the cut and subject yourself to a national TV audience. Now the guy in the hat says, “Dude, you are so far gone even I can’t help you.” And Alex is told to leave. Partly because he did the worst job at peacocking but mainly because he couldn’t even talk to women when they came up to him. He vows vengeance on Mystery and Matador as he leaves. Actually he pledges to work hard on his own but I feel it better to think that they had to drag him from the house as he shook his fist and cried out “Revenge!!!!”

That is it for Episode 1. Given that this review went longer than I thought I’ll do Episode 2 tomorrow in which we will see which of our merry band of Morlocks can meet the good doctor. Stay tuned.

Out of the corner of your eye

Much of the humor I find in life is by just looking at the small things that everyone else seems to miss. With such a torrent of information that we are all living under it is tough to pay attention to all of it. Luckily that is precisely what I do. Mainly because given my lack of a social life I have absolutely nothing else to do.

For example, back when I was job hunting I spent a lot of time on Monster. Not much came of it (there are probably seventy resumes of mine that have never been looked at floating around HR offices nationwide) but it did place me on all of these Monster email lists that get sent out providing helpful hints for your career. Last week they sent me one with the subject “Renegotiate your salary.”

Now let’s see. The market is down 40% in the past year. We have had the worst month in terms of market performance in at least twenty years and people are discussing major recessions and bantering around the word depression. Every company has been hit and there looks to be a lot of belt tightening in the future. Yep, this is exactly the type of environment in which you want to storm into the boss’s office and demand more money. I suggest pounding on the table and making wild, sweeping gestures to emphasize your point. I can’t see any harm coming from that whatsoever.

Meanwhile, on CNN right now there is a link stating “Can the Bible help you budget?” Personally, I really hope that a large amount of the post involves a detailed analysis of the loaves and the fishes story and how that can be used as a strategy for stretching your food dollar. I mean, they ended up with bushels left over after only starting out with a handful of food. However, if they do find verses that discuss how much I should put in a Roth IRA I will really need to reread the good book a little more closely.

(Oh, and so I don’t sound too cynical here is the best interpretation I know of for the loaves and the fishes story. When people traveled in those days, even to hear someone speak, you would always carry food with you. In those sad, pathetic days before McDonald’s you never knew when you would have a chance to buy something to eat. As a result this hillside of people after listening to the preaching was hungry but a large number had food. When the bushels were passed around people took some out but more than that, put what they had extra in so that all could eat. Shared their excess for the benefit of the whole. That is one view of it. I’m sure my theologian on call will have a different interpretation.)

Finally, as it is Halloween it means that the costume shops are in full effect. You know, those places that pop up for a month’s worth of business and then disappear until they get reborn as a fireworks outlet in summer. Well, to bring in customers they always have someone in costume out front trying to attract traffic. Usually I see people in super hero costumes or the occasional Frankentein monster. Nothing too special and you could always tell that the person holding the sign is hating every minute of it and is thankful that no one can see his face.

So I wasn’t too surprised when I drove past one of these places and saw someone dressed in a wizard’s costume. I’m talking full on Dumbledore with the robes and the hat and a beard that looked real enough that I assume that it was his own. What took me by surprise is how he was dramatically waving his arms and occasionally, and I swear I am not making this up, bowing to the traffic. One hand in front, one hand behind his back, full on bow whenever a car turned into the parking lot. It crossed the line from being entertaining to really creepy. There isn’t much about Halloween that is actually scary, unless you count crass commercialism centered around a meaningless holiday that takes away from the importance of Sweetest Day, but a guy with a wand bowing to me is more than a bit jarring.

Tomorrow: The return of The Pick Up Artist recaps! Starting with a double recap of the first two episodes. What secrets shall we learn this time?

Best of 120 Minutes: I think what I miss most about music right now is just finding songs and bands that are just fun. I’m stuck in the alt-country gutter for the most part, a genre that is lyrically brilliant but not exactly something that you can dance to. Even alt-rock is really mopey and emo at the moment. We need more bands like the Soup Dragons. You’re not sure what the song means but you enjoy it all the same.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Howie Day “The Madrigals EP”
2) Billy Bragg “Don’t Try This at Home”
3) Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins “Rabbit Fur Coat”
4) Pearl Jam “Ten”
5) Various Artists “Bloodshot Records Sampler 2001”

Joe the Plumber: Threat or Menace?

More than a few notes to end the week and I’ve just been in a list kind of mood.

1) In shocking news, I read today that Joe the Plumber is not a licensed plumber. So in fact he has been operating as some sort of black market criminal; unclogging toilets and installing drains in full violation of existing codes. This might put a crimp on his business plans but he still could rely on the slogan “Joe the Plumber: Because the fate of the nation rests in his greasy hands.”

2) Can I just say how upset I still am on the whole Joe the Plumber thing? Really this is the symbol of just how horribly the democratic system in America has fallen. We have gone from the Jeffersonian ideal of candidates discussing wide ranging issues impacting the future of the nation to two people sniping at each other as to how their policies will effect one person who, because his name is incorrectly filled out on his voter registration card, might not actually be eligible to vote. But this might have been part of McCain’s plan of winning the election one voter at a time.

3) Switching gears, Leanne won Project Runway!!!! Finally, my favorite contestant won a season of the show. True, Christian was the best designer last year but I just liked Chris Marsh better. Leanne was not only super cute in a Pacific Northwest granola type of way but she also put together a great collection. True, all of the pieces had the same waves and structural patterns in them but they were all different and cohesive. Even better, while you knew that there was an insane amount of work behind them they all seemed so natural and you could imagine a real person wearing the outfits. As opposed to Kenley’s massive shoulderpad designs.

4) There was only one thing that could have made the ending of the show better. After they announced Leanne the winner I would have loved it if she immediately turned around to Kenley and yelled “Scoreboard bitch!” That would have been an ending.

5) In retrospect, there is only one other note that I would like to make to the debate live blog. During the abortion portion of the debate I would have immediately pledged my vote to either candidate if he would have pledged “Abortions for some, small American flags for others.” Ah, I remember Emperor Kang. Now there was a leader you could trust.

6) Here is the strange thing about living in Wilmington, Delaware. When you write out a check to pay your credit card bill you suddenly realize that you are literally mailing it down the street. I feel like I should just stop by and pay them in cash or something. Well, that is not the only strange thing about living in Wilmington. Waking up every morning, realizing that you are in Delaware and struggling with exactly why you are there is also a bit of a disconcerting experience.

7) Best idea for a Halloween costume I have heard yet: a flip cup game. Just wear a table around your neck, place some plastic cups on the table, and challenge all comers to a game. I’ll probably just grab my backpack and put on my matching red and white striped shirt and hat and go as Waldo again.

8) I’d like to wish a happy Sweetest Day to my….to my….ok, applications for the position of Sweetie are available upon request. Please form an orderly queue. Seriously, I’m very close to creating a match.com profile just because I think it would be funny.

Let's Play the Feud!

9:05 P.M.: And we are coming to you live from Battling the Current election headquarters for the third and final debate between John McCain and Barrack Obama. Joining me tonight is Republican spokesman Stuffed Dilbert Doll, Democrat spokesman Snake Eyes Action Figure and Green Party spokesman Ralph Nader.

9:06 P.M.: I’m not kidding, for twenty bucks and a veggie burger I got Ralph Nader to come over to my apartment and watch the debate and try to persuade me to waste my vote. He even brought beer. Not good beer, mind you, and I really don’t need to be told that my hops have not been genetically altered, but beer nonetheless.

9:08 P.M.: As always here is the drill. I will watch the debate and write down my witty remarks as they come to me. Barring that I will just start making fun of people in the crowd. And yes, I’m doing this on a slight tape delay as my workout went a little long but given that I completed a Level 9 hill climb on the treadmill I really don’t care.

9:10 P.M.: The goals for the two candidates tonight. Obama: Don’t screw up. McCain: Fix the economy and make George Bush likable in ninety minutes. Hofstra gets to host the debate. This is the biggest event at Hofstra since…since…that awesome kegger in 1993?

9:14 P.M.: The rules are simple. One fall to a finish. This is thunderdome. Two men enter. One man leaves.

9:16 P.M.: I’d really like to know what McCain is writing down on his yellow legal pad. Schieffer has barely started talking and he is scribbling away. Also, I need to say something about Nancy Reagan and since she was mentioned here is my chance. It is sad that she fractured her pelvis in a fall but did you hear that it took her four days to go to the hospital for it? That is toughness.

9:17 P.M.: Shoot, I just lost a bet. Obama is wearing a red tie. Democrats always wear a blue tie. I thought it was a law or something. McCain is in blue. Apparently we are in bizaro world tonight.

9:21 P.M.: Well I was just lectured on a plumber’s business plan. Apparently the entire U.S. economy is based around a guy named Joe. He’s received more airtime tonight than most senatorial candidates. And to be honest I don’t care about a guy named Joe. Though it is nice that Obama said he is willing to pay more taxes.

9:28 P.M.: Someone should tell Obama that education helping the young drive us into the 21st century when we are already in 2008. Technically this is the 21st century. And McCain just lost Iowa by saying that he opposes ethanol tarrifs. Also, if McCain knows how to cut spending why has he kept it a secret?

9:30 P.M.: For those wondering, that planetarium projector in Chicago is for the Adler Planetarium, one of the premier museums in the city and therefore the country. So it is not like we spent three million on some junior college somewhere. It’s part of the museum campus for crying out loud.

9:35 P.M.: The fact that Fox News is used as a reference for a laugh line is a sad statement on the state of the press. It’s correct but sad nonetheless.

9:38 P.M.: Interesting to note that McCain hasn’t denied any of the negative remarks that were stated in his campaign ads. That said neither did Obama and any time one uses the phrase “100% of your ads have been negative” you know they are wrong. Obama is missing on some points here.

9:42 P.M.: Again with Joe the Plumber! Snake Eyes: What is your opinion on this new front?

9:43 P.M.:

9:44 P.M.: Maybe hiring Snake Eyes as a spokesman wasn’t the wisest move.

9:46 P.M.: So in nine minutes of discussing negative campaigns all we did was have both candidates launch negative attacks on each other. We might as well have had Texas Death Match rules instituted.

9:52 P.M.: Ooh, a running mate question. This is going to be good. Hopefully we get some good Palin jokes out of this. Or at least a few more references to the hellhole that is Scranton.

9:54 P.M.: Uh, no, we don’t know Sarah Palin. You need to do interviews for people to know who you are. I still can’t figure out how being an outsider qualifies you to be vice-president. That implies that any random person taken off the street could be made veep with no issues.

9:58 P.M.: Personally I would like to have questions on climate control. Given the work that Cobra has done in that regard (after the successful completion of the Serpentor project) I believe that is an important topic to explore.

10:02 P.M.: Even though the economy is absolutely crap it is nice to have both candidates talking about energy policy when you work in the energy industry. True, I have to wait until after the election to figure out what direction we are going in but at least either way business should be good.

10:09 P.M.: Just once I would like to see a candidate when asked about health care to answer “I will make placebos free for all! Every single American will receive placebos to ease their pain!” That will solve half our problems right there.

10:10 P.M.: Ah, McCain just took the “Kids today are just too fat” tact. Because the problem with the health care system is laziness. And please, for the love of God, can we stop talking about Joe the Plumber? I’m about to go to Ohio to find this guy and kick his ass.

10:15 P.M.: Question (funk dat): In what world does someone who makes more than $250K a year not rich? If you were able to buy your own company wouldn’t that imply that you are rather well off. I’m pretty confident that Joe is an arrogant prick.

10:27 P.M.: Yeah, I’ll just quiet on the whole abortion issue. Some things simply can’t be discussed without causing major arguments even when you don’t mean to.

10:29 P.M.: You know, if you made it a decent paying gig I might think about becoming a math teacher. It wouldn’t be that challenging a life and I’d get to go home at three in the afternoon. Wait, put away the video games? I’m not sure if I can support a candidate who is anti Grand Theft Auto.

10:42 P.M.: And that is it. I would call it another tie, maybe a little leaning to McCain. Oh, and after seeing a picture of Joe the Plumber I take back my threat to beat him up. He seems like a pretty tough guy. I still think this election is Obama’s and the democrats to lose. Not that that is out of the field of possibilities. We are talking about the democrats here. Anyway, time to catch up with my tape of Project Runway.

Wednesday Night Music Club: Technically this should be part of Best of 120 Minutes but there just isn’t enough Blake Babies music in this world. I need this at the end of the day.

Help me J-Dog. You're my only hope.

Ok, I have a lot of small topics to talk about tonight so I am just going to go through them in order.

1) Yes, I am aware that I missed the season premiere of the second season of The Pick Up Artist on Sunday. However, have no fear as I have recorded the episode and will be providing my play by play analysis on this and all future episodes. Because if there is one thing I have learned in my life it is that the only way to learn how to talk to women is by taking advice from a guy in a top hat with a pair of lips tattooed to his neck. Hell, I own his instruction manual. I wish I was lying but I actually do own The Mystery Method in hardcover no less.

2) Oh, I would like to thank Comcast for allowing me to miss the premiere episode by showing for the past two weeks that all channels have “To Be Announced” as their scheduled broadcast on the online program guide. Seriously, I was nearly forced to buy a newspaper on Sunday just so I could get a damn TV listing. What type of world do we live in where I might be forced to buy something in order to read?

3) Has anyone noticed that on the Yahoo front page they list the Obama-McCain poll numbers and are constantly updating them? Several times a day they show them going up or down 0.2%. I’m not sure where the hell they are getting their data from as the last time I checked it wasn’t as though there is a real time polling market equivalent to the stock market. Plus, I’m not sure if I need a moment by moment update of something that is by definition within the margin of error. Of course, most people will simply ask why am I using Yahoo but that can easily be explained by the fact that I am an idiot.

4) For the first time since moving out here I played trivia tonight. I wish I continued my streak of winning money the first time I play in a new venue but I missed a few questions and came in sixth. Still, not bad for a team of one and I should have won a free round of drinks but I was really, really dumb on a question. The game is done in a pub quiz style and that really doesn’t suit my temperament. You are asked ten questions, write down your answers, and then wait around for ten or fifteen minutes as the host collects the sheets, marks the correct answers, tallies up the scores, and jokes with the teams. Do this for multiple rounds and there is an awful lot of dead time especially when you are by yourself. Sigh. I miss my Badgers. We at least would have gotten the Wisconsin question right.

5) Best category though: All you get is someone’s name and have to determine whether they are a Nobel Prize winner or a Porn Star. Surprisingly challenging.

6) I’m still behind in watching How I Met Your Mother but after finally seeing last week’s episode it is clear that they are dealing with too much plot. We have Robin’s career and her possibly moving to Japan. Then there is Barney being in love with Robin and therefore not being Barney. Marshall has gone from a fun loving student to a kind of whiny, unmotivated goof. And Ted is engaged to someone that the viewer has no attachment to at all. I don’t care about Stella. I care about Sarah Chalke because she is an awesome actress based on her roles in Roseanne and Scrubs but the character is absolutely meaningless. Compare that to Victoria from the first season. Ted and Victoria are possibly my favorite couple ever, the “thank God” moment at the end of their first episode together is the highlight of the entire series, and even three years after the fact I say this about someone who was only in four episode. Meanwhile, we have Ted getting married to someone whose daughter might not actually have a name yet much less shown how Ted is adjusting to be a potential step dad. Just poor writing.

7) Big Bang Theory was spot on last week though. I’d comment about losing someone to the world of multiplayer gaming but that is a bit of a sore subject for me right now. Find me at the end of a bar one night and ask me about Everquest and I’ll explain. It won’t make any sense but I’ll explain.

8) Seriously, a hobbit? I don’t match up favorably to a hobbit?

9) Tomorrow night, one last debate live blog. Candidates! Canned positions! Bob Schieffer asking questions that will in no way be answered! I’ll try to make it interesting.

Questions in the dark

“Why don’t I ever see you dancing?”

I was asked that in a dream last night and it has been bouncing around my head all day.

Now I know that I have talked about my dreams before and I can never tell if people want to hear about them or not. Dreams are always much more interesting to the person who lived them than to someone who is forced to listen to something that is by its nature nonsensical. However, for the past few weeks I have been having these vivid dreams with similar elements and I just have to talk about the one I had last night. Very seldom do you wake up from a dream and wonder if you are now in reality.

I won’t go into the first half of the dream, which involved a horrible dinner in Vegas, my using a street luge as a means of transportation (very poorly as I crashed into a building) and my getting a lift to my old grade school in some guy’s car. That was all interesting and rather vivid but instead of ending up at the school I ended up at the British Museum. Specifically, the British Museum in 1998 as all of the scaffolding was up for the construction of the Great Hall. Exactly how we drove from the Chicago suburbs to London and back in time in one fell swoop is beyond me.

Obviously, by this point I realized it was a dream and kept on telling myself to wake up. Things were very vivid at this point. I could feel the wooden handrails as I walked up the stairs and the rain pelting me as I kept on trying to break myself from the dream. It was still as real as any workday morning. I then found myself lying on a bench, trying to protect myself from the rain when I noticed someone was doing the exact same thing right next to me. And while we can question my subconscious here I was certain that this is the person who is in charge of Everything. After a bit of small talk he asked me, “Why don’t I ever see you dancing?”

It wasn’t a critique of my life. It wasn’t a charge that I was wasting my days on a fool’s errand. It was one of genuine interest and almost a suggestion. Why is it that I can’t bring myself to dance?

Of course I don’t mean this in the physical sense though even in that sense I don’t dance. I blame my lack of coordination and my self-conscious streak for that nugget of my personality. But I think that is part of the point. I can never relax and just dance. Screw whoever is watching me if they think I look like an idiot. If I’m enjoying myself why should I care what someone else thinks?

But I don’t work that way. I live life with a look of grim determination. I’m so used to being a fighter and having to struggle for all of my accomplishments that I can never let it all go. My shoulders are always tensed, always on guard for the next challenge. I can’t say that this has been a bad way to go through life. Almost all of my success is due to the fact that I will simply outwork and outhustle people. It just leads to a life where you can never relax. Even when I went out to the bar on Saturday night I hunkered down on my stool, eyes scanning the room, my hand always inches from my beer on the off chance that someone might try to reach for it.

I don’t dance in my life. I’m 35 years old and the times where I just went out and celebrated the fact that I am alive, that despite the fact that the world around me is horribly flawed it is still the most amazing thing that one can ever imagine being part of, are few and far between. I’ve always been serious. I’ve always been focused on accomplishing the task in front of me. Now I have people in my dreams asking me if that really is all there is. And I have to say, I’m pretty sure that they are right.

My Third Life Crisis

(Side note before I start the main essay. I am very proud of the fact that the Flyers crowd booed Sarah Palin as she came out to drop the ceremonial first puck last night. First, it shows that I am living in an area with the same political views that I have. Second, after seven years in the wilderness I finally get hockey coverage again.)

Because my life has been in such a state of upheaval over the past two months due to moving across the country and starting a new job what should have been one of the most influential moments of my life has become a footnote. I’m not even sure if I’ve written about it or at least not in the level that I should have. Anything that weighs on my mind to that degree really needs to be examined in more detail.

I’m talking about turning 35. Now I can’t say that my birthday wasn’t memorable. I flew from Philly to KC the night before and spent my birthday packing up the last bits of my apartment, spending time with friends and hosting a trivia game. But given all the stress of the move and knowing that it would be the last time I would be seeing a number of people I couldn’t call it a relaxing birthday. Hell, I didn’t even have cake. How can you have a birthday without cake?

But it is not the day itself that concerns me. It is the realization that I am 35 and have moved to a new city where I know no one and have to come to terms with the fact that this is my life. On some levels that is not an issue at all. I have a very good job at a time where having any job at all has to be considered a positive move. My apartment is amazing and I have everything that I could possibly need at my fingertips. So on the surface my life is rather perfect.

Except that it is not and I would be kidding myself to say that it was. Basically I am alone again as I discovered when I was out last night at a bar sitting by myself. That isn’t too unusual and I had the benefit of getting to watch several good games but it is not the life I want to have. It certainly isn’t the life that I expected for myself. I fully intended to be married by the time I was 35. I could easily see myself being a dad right now with a house in the suburbs. I’m more amazed by the fact that I do not have one than anything else that has happened to me in my life.

I know there are a lot of reasons behind it. I’m painfully shy when it comes to meeting people. I’m happy to sit at the bar by myself. Even if I see someone I would like to talk to moving from my barstool is a challenge and a half. Between my sarcasm and my occasional arrogance I can be a little tough to get to know. And for someone who is so desperate to meet someone I have rather high standards. But at the end of the day I really do consider myself to be a nice, smart, caring guy who isn’t that bad looking. You would think that someone would have fallen for me by now.

I’m not as tortured by this as I was a few months back. Maybe it is the fresh start and the fact that I have a reason to put on pants every morning. But there is only one thing in my life that I am lacking and all of the pressure is on me to find the missing piece. Any ideas on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated.

Best of 120 Minutes: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin had two bass players. That is the only fact that anyone can remember about this band. They were occasionally played on MTV and they always mentioned the dual bass players. The fact that I still can recall this concerns me.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Dave Matthews Band “Recently”
2) Sister Seven “Wrestling Over Tiny Matters”
3) Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas “Songs to No One”
4) The Brunettes “Mars Loves Venus”
5) Jay Bennett “Bigger than Blue”

Lightening the mood

Since things have been rather serious and dour as of late I feel that it is very important for me to bring the nation’s focus back where it belongs. Such as sitting in stunned disbelief after finding out that Jamie Lynne Spears is preggers again only four months after giving birth. Yes, Brittney’s little sister is playing catch up by having Irish twins before the age of eighteen. I somehow feel that a return to Nickelodeon isn’t in the cards at the moment. Unless we could use her as a star of “Clarissa Explains How She Made Some Really Bad Choices In Life” or “You Can’t Do That If You Were Using Birth Control.”

(The story is she didn’t think she could get pregnant because she was nursing at the time. I assume that her first pregnancy was due to the belief that you can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up or you can’t get pregnant if the day ends in a Y.)

Also, we are now down to the final contestants on Project Runway. Kenley the bitch makes it to the finale and as much as I hate her, based on the wedding and bridesmaid dresses she made she deserves to go. She was easily better than Kotto and Jerrel even if this is like the twelfth time she has acted stunned when someone said that her dress reminds them of another designers. Leanne, who is my favorite, put together two absolutely amazing pieces. The wedding dress was super cool and looked like something that both the bride and the mother of the bride could like but for totally different reasons. Her bridesmaid dress was actually pretty and when was the last time you said that about one of those.

(Yes, I like Leanne partly because she looks like Cat Power and is from Portland. Sue me, I just dig that style. Was bummed when her boyfriend got screen time tonight.)

In other media news I am rather disturbed by seeing Ashton Kutcher in commercials for Canon. Less because of my feelings towards Canon (fine camera products one and all) and more for the reason that I have no desire to see him on my television set at any time. I can’t even bring myself to watch reruns of That 70’s Show, though to be honest any episode in which Donna isn’t a redhead isn’t worth watching on general principle. I don’t want to see Ashton acting all goofy at a wedding. I don’t want to see him snapping pictures. I want to see him getting hit in the head repeatedly with a two by four. Now that would make a great commercial for Home Depot.

I’ll end with another quick discussion of the economy. Now when I say that I have watched the market for 25 years I am not kidding. My dad showed me how to read the financial pages when I was ten. I learned how understand stock symbols and make sense of the mass of numbers that filled the boring section of the newspaper. This was back in the day when stocks traded in eighths. We couldn’t even afford decimal points.

So I was paying attention when the 1987 crash went down. Now in some ways that was more destructive than what we are going through now. It was certainly quicker and more disturbing. Both took place in October as all crashes take place in October. It’s kind of a financial law. What is more interesting to look at is how the average person is impacted psychologically as opposed to financially.

Remember that we live in a much different world than we did 21 years ago. The average person had to wait until they read the stock pages the next day to find out where there stocks were and even then they could only make a rough estimate as to where there portfolio was. Everything took place in the mysterious world of Wall Street and it was an almost mystical place. Honestly, adults looked at me like a freak because I could figure out what a stock was trading at mainly because they had no idea how to read those pages.

Today everyone is an expert and can find out instantaneously. We all can jump on Yahoo and find the value of all of our stocks. If we want to be fancy we could build spreadsheets to automatically calculate our position. If not we can jump on a website and see the value of our 401K to the penny. As a result, peoples’ focus is constantly on the market. That makes life hell because if there is one thing you don’t want to do is look at those numbers on a minute by minute basis. Right now all you get is depressed. Long term all it does is force you to make bad decisions because those little fluctuations do not matter. The reason people are on edge now more than in 1987 is partly due to the fact that more of us are in the market than before. But mainly it is because the moment by moment changes to the market are broadcast to us instantaneously. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

I'm Tom Brokaw and you can all go to hell...

For those who are curious about the economy or more accurately my effect on a company here are some rather frightening statistics. Since I started working on September 2nd my company’s stock price has fallen by 32.5%. On the other hand, since I left Sprint its stock price has fallen by 32.7%. I haven’t decided if this indicates that the economy is in dire straits or if I am simply the kiss of death for companies in that even when I leave just the trace of my presence results in utter turmoil. I’ll keep everyone abreast of any further career moves so that they can alter their portfolios as necessary.

(Huh huh Beavis, abreast)

While I did not liveblog the debate (I will for the final one) I did watch the entire event and have more than a few comments to make on the whole show. Here they are, numbered for your reading pleasure.

1) Wow, I never thought that Tom Brokaw could be such a whiny bitch. “But we have time limits! And agreed upon rules!” Brokaw actually goofed up the flow of the debate by those little interjections. Neither candidate seemed to be upset about the other talking longer than required but the only time things got testy was when Brokaw decided to cut people off.

2) I only caught one guy in the crowd falling asleep during the debate. It would have been hysterical to see the camera pan during one of the speeches only to catch someone just dead out of it in the audience.

3) I’m not a big fan of the town hall style debates. First off, I’m not quite sure if the average American should be allowed to vote much less ask questions of the candidates. Then we have all of this walking around and faux sincerity where the fact that someone can remember the name of the person who was just introduced is considered to be a significant advantage. I’d much rather have an experienced journalist asking tough questions and forceful follow-ups.

4) Hey, remember eight years ago when the debates focused on lock boxes and whether or not we were all going to be rich or super-rich? Sigh. I miss those days. Think about this fact. We have gone through three debates and we have not had a single question on abortion. In fact, it is not even a campaign issue. I didn’t think I would ever see a presidential campaign where that issue never appears.

5) Back to the debate format. McCain, especially at the beginning, did an excellent job of connecting with the live audience. I can see how he thrives in that town hall format as he is better in that one on one interaction than one would ever expect. But he really suffers from the nature of television and his history of injuries. Because of his war wounds he moves rather jerkily and every step seems to emphasize his age. It hurts him even though it has nothing to do with his ability. Obama, on the other hand, fulfilled his main goal of looking presidential. The way he composed himself sitting down, walking the stage, referencing McCain, it was all done in a manner that showed poise and confidence. When people talk about wondering if someone is ready to lead they really aren’t referring to s set of experiences and well-earned skills. They more want to see someone who they will be comfortable listening to in a presidential address. Obama showed that last night.

6) Similar to that, I want to point out that Obama’s political ads might go down as some of the best in history. As I am within spitting distance of Pennsylvania I see a lot of ads (the three electoral votes that I control as the sole voter in Delaware are of less importance) and I am extremely impressed by his economic ones. They consist of Obama at a desk, mirroring the scene in the Oval Office, discussing his economic plan in detail and contrasting it to McCain’s. At the end he gives the “I approve this message” tag and then states exactly why he approves of it. The power of these ads are immense and I have not seen much commentary on them. First, he once again is positioning himself in a way that makes voters comfortable in accepting him as a political leader. He also states facts (or at least what are purported to be facts) and those details take slight precedence over hyperbole. But what it is more than anything is personal. This isn’t just an ad made by some Madison avenue team with a soundbite tossed in at the end. By the sole fact that he is on screen, giving this minute speech, not providing the same canned, required by law ending, you gain this strong personal connection to the candidate. I really feel that those might be the most important ads of the election.

7) Two fun TV moments. At one point while Obama was speaking you could see McCain walk behind him to talk to Brokaw and you had a momentary hope that he would punch him out. Then you had Brokaw whining at the end that the candidates were blocking his teleprompter.

8) Here is the final, telling moment of the debate and the election. Now I felt that the debate was a tie. McCain was better at the start, Obama better at the end, and no one made any real moves. Most of the polls showed it going to Obama by a wider margin than I would have thought. But the most important moment took place after the debate ended.

Apparently they handed out cameras to the audience members to take pictures of the candidates and the event after it was over. So while the candidates were shaking hands and relaxing you could see the audience taking pictures. Every camera was focused on Obama. People were standing up in order to get their picture taken with him. This is in a room of theoretically undecided voters and you could just sense that all eyes were on Obama. That is the biggest sign that the election is his to lose.

Now I’ll reiterate that I am a Chicago democrat and in no way can be considered unbiased. I’ll also state that I have immense respect for John McCain and have said in the past that he is the one republican who I felt that I could support. But this election seems to be turning into one for the democrats to lose rather than the republicans to win and that is a much different ballgame.

Wednesday Night Music Club: As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve started working out again. What that means is that I find myself spending 45 minutes a night on a treadmill wondering exactly why I am doing this. The only thing that makes the time worthwhile is I get to listen to New Pornographers songs the entire time. Pretty much makes any endeavor worthwhile.

Your zombie economic forecast

Given that we just suffered through another 500 point drop in the Dow I thought that I should provide my view on the current state of the economy. As I do have an MBA in Finance I do possess at least a little background on the subject at hand. However, it should be noted that I am also a person who willingly paid money to see Weird Al Yankovic in concert and therefore my judgment cannot be trusted in even the best of circumstances. Here it goes, in handy question and answer format.

Q: So how bad is it?
A: Bad. Really bad. Guy coming after you wearing a hockey mask and a chainsaw bad.
Q: Eep! So what the hell is going on?
A: Let’s try to keep it simple. When you put money in the bank the bank doesn’t actually hold on to it. They lend it to people who then use it and promise to pay it back. As long as they do there is no problem. Except that now we lent to a lot of people who didn’t pay the banks back. And the banks invested in all of these strange financial instruments that were meant to reduce risk but in fact just made the risk larger. Now several banks are failing because they can’t cover what they owe while the others aren’t lending out money to anyone.
Q: So, what’s wrong with banks not lending?
A: Well, see, companies don’t actually carry cash. Whenever they need to do something (up to and including make payroll) they typically do it through a loan. Now they can’t do that so everything is seizing up. Hence, a huge downturn in the market until the credit market opens up again.
Q: What is your next to worst case scenario?
A: Dow drops to 7777 over the next several months and you have double digit unemployment (I’ll guess 12%).
Q: Why 7777? That is a rather precise figure.
A: 7777 is the next major psychological barrier for the Dow now that we have broken 10,000. Despite the fact that the number is rather meaningless people really do react to it. That’s why on Monday the market rebounded back to 10,000. They felt safe around that number. With that level gone the next safe zone is 7777, which exists because people really like the number seven. I’m not making that up. There is actually research that agrees with me.
Q: Ok, so what is your worst case scenario?
A: Complete collapse of the global economic system resulting in worldwide anarchy. However, for those of you who have heeded my advice and have prepared for the inevitable war against the zombies you will find that the plans that you have developed for that conflict will serve you well in such a situation. And no, I will not tell you where my secret hideout is. When the zombies rise we are all on our own.
Q: Wait a minute, as your ex-girlfriend won’t you come and rescue me when I call upon you for help while surrounded by zombies?
A: Ha ha. No. As anyone well versed in zombie defense tactics knows one of the first actions to be taken by any female with a known former male suitor who also happens to be a hopeless romantic is to call on said suitor for rescue. In the best case scenario, he will draw the zombies away from your position and provide a useful diversion as you escape. In the worst case scenario, he actually will rescue you and then you will have to patiently accept his company until such a time arises in which he can properly be utilized as zombie bait. Unless you are by my side when a Class 3 outbreak occurs you are out of luck.
Q: You really have put a lot of thought into this whole zombie scenario, haven’t you?
A: I keep a machete at the ready at all times. Blades don’t need reloading.
Q: Anyway, back to the market. Any suggestions?
A: If you’re my age keep plugging away at your 401K. Yes, you’ve lost a ton of money but that is money meant for thirty years from now. If the market doesn’t recover by then we will seriously be at the point where foraging for food will take precedence over retirement plans. I’d stay away from any company where they will need a lot of capital in order to start making money (sorry tech startups) until the debt markets open up. Always side on companies that make products that people have to use. People will need to buy diapers and razor blades. Otherwise, try to keep a good store of cash at the ready, have your resume up to date and start networking just in case.
Q: Ever seen the market this bad?
A: Nope. I’ve been following the market for 25 years (really, I have had my eye on it since I was 10) and I’ve never seen a configuration of events like this. The Dow is down over 30% in the past year. But, there are actually some positive signs. The whole world economy is hitting a recession and that means everyone is in the same boat and that provides opportunities for the first people to figure out a fix, which will most likely be the U.S. Plus, when people around the world get scared the money goes into the U.S. market because even in horrible times we are still the safest bet. The dollar is strengthening and the very weak dollar that we’ve had worried me more than anything. Oil prices are down and that should help provide at least a modicum of stability to the whole state of affairs. We haven’t bottomed out yet but at least I can see some positive signs out there.
Q: Still happy that you got a job when you did?
A: Yep. Might turn out to be the luckiest moment of my life. I’ll take employed in Delaware over unemployed in Kansas City any day of the week.

Off to watch the debate. Be vigilant! If anyone lurches towards you always ask yourself “Is that a zombie?” If in doubt, aim for the head. Better safe than undead I always say.

Yes, I have a question...

Given that Tuesday’s debate is going to be a Town Hall format in which the audience members will be allowed to pose questions to the candidates I feel that it is my civic duty to provide the people of Nashville with a base set of questions to have at the ready tomorrow evening. Please feel free to use any of these (though please reference Battling the Current and kcgatsby in the process)

· Given the current economic crisis at what point do you believe that we should begin to resort to cannibalism and if so, which senator do you feel should be the first to go in the pot?
· Based on what we have learned from the robots sent back in time to kill John Connor do you still support funding Skynet?
· For the greater good, would you use your power as president to force MTV to start playing music videos again?
· If hypothetically you were named Emperor as a result of the ongoing conflict with the Trade Federation would you use this as an opportunity to enact Order 66?
· Follow up question: When can we expect Wookie Life Day to be named a federal holiday?
· With all of our focus on terrorism centered around Al Qaeda aren’t we missing the more obvious home-grown terror threat posed by Cobra especially given their recent recruitment of Dr. Mindbender?
· How in God’s name does Vanderbilt have a better football team than Tennessee? I mean, what the hell?
· What would you do for a Klondike bar?
· Senator McCain, did you know who Governor Palin was when you chose her as your running mate or were you simply picking names out of a hat at that point?
· Do you believe that we could solve all of our existing foreign policy issues simply by naming Chuck Norris Secretary of Defense?
· Based on the current state of the country, would you agree with issuing a proclamation stating that everyone gets one week off in order to get their shit together?
· In an all out battle to the death who would in a conflict between the Smurfs and the Snorks?
· What was your favorite cartoon as a child? (I think I would actually want to know this.)
· If as president you were allowed to bring back one television show which one would it be?
· If I promised to vote for you only if the national anthem was changed to “Baby Got Back” would you do it?
· Given the high price of gasoline, will you finally remove the roadblocks keeping Mattel from releasing the hoverboards promised to us in Back to the Future Part Two?
· Do either of you truly believe that this debate is worth pre-empting The Biggest Loser?
· Can I get extra credit for watching the debate as well?

From somebody to an individual

Just a whole bunch of random thoughts that came to me over the weekend:

1) Is anyone else really freaked out by the DirectTV ad that is showing during the playoffs featuring the cast of Poltergeist? Now, it is nice to see Craig T. Nelson get some work but the little girl from that movie died when she was still a kid (right as they were about to film Poltergeist 3 if I remember correctly). It is just real creepy to see Craig T. Nelson act in a scene with a child who has been dead for more than fifteen years. When I watch the commercial I am not thinking about switching from cable; I’m wondering what her parents think every time that commercial comes on the air.

2) Every day on the way to work I pass a sign that reads “Wilmington: A Place to be Somebody”. That is quite possibly the weakest city slogan ever developed. Let’s examine it in detail. First, we define Wilmington as a place. Not a spectacular place, or a unique place or even a slightly above average place. It is just your typical, undescript place defined as such to avoid confusion from people who might believe that it is some sort of mineral. Then we have “to be” an extremely weak, meaningless term that most English teachers hate when they see it. Finally, we find out that here you can be somebody. Not anybody, mind you. We don’t grant you that much freedom. No, you can be somebody. You can be another nameless, faceless cog in the machine here. Every day I see that sign and you know what, I’m not very inspired by it.

3) I’ve been very proud of myself for keeping with my exercise routine for the past week but there is one slight issue. It is quite odd to finish a workout and then take an elevator back to my apartment because I am too lazy to take the stairs. It’s like “I just spent forty minutes walking in place. I have earned the right to have a motorized piece of equipment take me someplace that I could easily reach on my own.” It just seems wrong.

4) For those who wonder, yes I do my own laundry. However, as my new apartment has a front loading washer (something I have never encountered before) I have spent the past month just trying to figure out where you put the damn detergent. Only took me about eight loads (and a helpful television commercial) to realize that I had been doing it wrong. Yes, I have multiple advanced degrees but yet am flummoxed by a standard appliance.

5) Oh, I finally got around to watching all the shows that I taped last week. Big Bang Theory was great if just for Leonard losing a girl over an argument over the differences between string theory and quantum loop theory. I’ve been there. (No, really, I have. I also had a girl break up with me because, and I quote, “Her cat didn’t like me.”) How I Met Your Mother was weak again (though Marshall trying to psyche himself up for interviews was good) and I am really sensing that this will be the last season for the show unless the quality ramps up quickly.

6) Finally, I finally got around to my guilty pleasure of watching The Biggest Loser. There is something really satisfying about sitting on the couch, scarfing down a pizza, while watching fat people exercise. I’m still at mixed emotions about the show. It is great that it does inspire people to work out and lose weight and yes, I have taken advice from the show. But, it is completely unrealistic as it shows the contestants losing ten pounds in a week because they get to spend all week working out. As silly as it sounds, Celebrity Fit Club is more realistic in terms of how people really lose weight. They even had a contestant gain weight while on the show. It is just a better window in how people have to get fit while still living in the real world.

Best of 120 Minutes: Thought that I would go to one of the classic acts that you would always see on a Sunday night: Depeche Mode. No one knows where they came from, no one knows where they disappeared to. But every week at around 11:35 there would always be a Depeche Mode video.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Richard Thompson “Live from Austin, TX”
2) Dave Matthews Band “Remember Two Things”
3) The Frames “The Cost”
4) The Ditty Bops “Pack Rat”
5) Allen Toussaint “Connected”

80's Weekend Rewind #7

Tonight on your 80's weekend rewind I bring you back to a nine year old boy's favorite video: The Tubes "She's a Beauty". For a nine year old this is like Nirvana. It is a strip club and a roller coaster all in one!

(Seriously, I always thought that this is what strip clubs would be like when I was a kid. Oh how disappointed I was when I found out that there was neither mermaids nor girls on trapeezes.)

For the life of me I can't explain exactly what this video is about. So we have a kid who is going on a carnival ride. But the safety system is a dominatrix, which would make Disneyland a much more interesting place. The band is playing and all acting like idiots when the camera is nearby. Then there are the strippers slash acrobats.

We then segue into a little girl performing in a ballet outfit, which seems wrong on so many levels given everything else that is going on in the video. Especially given that after seeing her they run into a tower of amps (though given the musical quality of The Tubes that might be agood thing) where we are joined by the women in cages followed by the mermaid (regular, not inverse for those wondering). By the time we reach the end the kid is now an old man.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm as screwed up as I am. Then I remember that I watched stuff like this every day for my entire childhood.

Veep Veep

9:17 P.M.: And we are coming to you live from the new and improved Battling the Current world headquarters surrounded by a cast of…yep it is still just me. Actually, there are even less people around me now (in terms of a social circle sense) than there was before. Better environment, less comfort. Sigh.

9:19 P.M.: For those of you who haven’t experienced one of these before I am going to be watching the vice presidential debate and providing my comments in real time. No tricks or gimmicks, I comment on what I see. So sit back, relax, and join me in waving a little pennant that reads “politics”.

9:20 P.M.: Yes, I know based on the timestamp on these entries this can’t be exactly called a live review. I worked out this evening and didn’t get back until the debate was about to start. As a result, I had to choose between writing while very sweaty or reviewing things in tape delay. Please don’t call me and ruin the ending. Ok, let’s start.

9:24 P.M.: As required by law, the debate is coming to us from St. Louis. All debates are held in St. Louis mainly because there are apparently a large number of cheap hotel rooms in the area. Washington University is still a confusion of names as it is neither in Washington nor a University (or at least not a real one).

9:25 P.M.: The rules of the debate. One fall with a 30 minute time limit. Managers are banned from ringside. (You know what I miss from pro wrestling? Time limits. They never announce those anymore. Sure, they aren’t really necessary but they added to the whole drama of the event).

9:27 P.M.: Sarah Palin speaks in a complete sentence, thus outperforming expectations. Of course, that sentence involves the mention of a child’s soccer game, which is not the main source of governmental policy that I am aware of.

9:30 P.M.: Joe Biden is actually sounding good and on topic. Not a bad start for him at all.

9:32 P.M.: Is it me or does Sarah Palin have a deer in the headlights look about her? She just looks stiff and scared. Also, I don’t want a vice president who uses the words “Darn it” in a debate. And did she lecture me about the way out of this economic crisis is by not running up my credit card bills? Seriously? We’re a good ten minutes in and Palin has yet to say a single policy standpoint.

9:36 P.M.: Biden looks good wearing a democratic blue tie. Palin is now talking about her experience as mayor in a 2,000 person town. I never expected to see a character from Northern Exposure taking the national political stage.

9:41 P.M.: Here is the natural problem with the Republican point of view at the moment. They are proposing a ….woo hoo, Wilmington just got a shout out from Biden! Represent! Anyway, the Republicans are arguing that the government is screwed up and only they can fix it. However since the Republicans have been the government it is essentially an argument that goes by “Just because we screwed everything up royally doesn’t mean that we can’t fix it.”

9:43 P.M.: Biden is more than a bit of a policy wonk apparently. I’m a detail guy and even I am getting lost. He trips over his words a little too much as else. We also got a Bridge to Nowhere joke, which provides us a bit of levity.

9:46 P.M.: You know why Palin could take on the oil companies? Because where else are they going to drill? Oh, and she just admitted that she has only been doing this five weeks and hasn’t promised anything to anyone.

9:47 P.M.: Earlier tonight I watched CBS news and they had done something interesting. They asked Biden and Palin the exact same question and put the answers side by side. When asked “What was the worst thing the Dick Cheney did while vice president” Biden answered “Destroying the constitution and supporting torture and executive privilege.” Palin’s answer? “Shooting a guy.” Not only does that show the difference in the candidates it gives a wonderful picture of where Cheney will go down in history.

9:52 P.M.: I’m always up to hearing about energy policy. It’s always nice to know that your job is part of the national debate.

9:53 P.M.: Well, at least Palin vaguely addressed that climate change might be result of human activities. That is an improvement over some of her earlier statement. I still haven’t heard a single policy statement from Palin or anything more than a generality. Yes, she looks perky talking about it but she is not saying anything.

9:55 P.M.: Here is a fun thing from work. Being on a trade floor I am surrounded by TV monitors showing the news all day. Today I saw on the closed captioning someone asking “Who are the democrats using to fill in for Palin in the practice debates?” I wanted to see that the answer was “We got that girl from Little Miss Sunshine. She might not know policy but she sure is cute.”

10:00 P.M.: I love how we have both candidates trying to say that “We don’t support gay marriage but that doesn’t mean I have any problem with them” and boy did Palin have to squirm around that issue.

10:07 P.M.: Down to the Middle East and the foreign threats portion of the debate. I did like the reference to “The Castro Brothers”. Makes them sound like a mafia organization. Like, “The west side docks were run by the Castro Brothers.” And when did Kissinger become the go to person for foreign policy? Aren’t people still trying to put him on trial for war crimes?

10:12 P.M.: I’ll give Palin credit. She actually has sounded rather good in the foreign policy section. She hasn’t said anything substantial yet but she has sounded more comfortable than she has throughout the entire debate.

10:13 P.M.: Hey, I wouldn’t sit down with the government of Spain either. Bunch of jerks, all of them.

10:16 P.M.: We all agree that Israel is important. Palin is happy to hear that even though it has been a backbone of foreign policy since, well, the country existed.

10:18 P.M.: If we were scoring on points, Biden would be walking away with this debate. Palin hasn’t made any glaring errors but I haven’t seen her launch any meaningful attacks. She just doesn’t sound believable (or at least strong) when talking about any policy. Just compare her to Biden. Who would you want in the room providing you guidance? On the plus side, her voice has been much less annoying than one would anticipate.

10:23 P.M.: Bosniacs? Biden just made up a word. Whenever people talk about Bosnia and Kosovo I always go back to something I read from P. J. O’Rourke. “Kosovo shows the classic American view of foreign struggle. We show up years late and bomb the country next door.”

10:29 P.M.: John McCain knows how to win a war. Ok, outside of Gulf War 1 which one did we win? Grenada and Panama. I’ll grant us a tie in Vietnam. I have about as much history of winning a war through my expertise at Risk than either of the candidates.

10:32 P.M.: Hey, I walk down Union Street in Wilmington! See, this is the difference between the Midwest and the East Coast. Here I get to see a vice president candidate when I go to dinner. Also, the Republicans can’t say that the Bush administration doesn’t count. I’m sorry but there is guilt by association.

10:35 P.M.: Did a third grade class just get a shout out? Is this a debate or a bad awards speech?

10:38 P.M.: Note to Palin: Agreeing with Dick Cheney is not precisely a good thing. That is essentially agreeing that the Constitution is optional. I am very glad that Biden called her out on that. That was a huge gaffe showing her mistake.

10:40 P.M.: See, here is the huge issue with Palin. She is asked about the big question around her experience and she replies by talking about her family and her world view. That is essentially saying that I deserve the job because I’m a good person not that I have any of the skills. For a starting job that is fine. I’ve been hired under that same logic. But no one made me COO as a result.

10:43 P.M.: Wow, Biden got choked up talking about his family. That was possibly the first moment of real emotion that I have ever seen in a debate. It was only for five seconds but it was noticeable.

10:45 P.M.: I love Palin saying that the Republicans have done poorly. She is essentially trying to sell Royals season tickets. Sure, we suck but why should we change?

10:48 P.M.: If you say that you have not compromised your positions you are not a politician. Never trust a politician who states anything differently. They are either lying or naïve.

10:50 P.M.: Sarah Palin is about to set a record. Ninety minute debate and not one meaningful statement. Well, she has done a better job than Perot’s running mate in 1992 but that is about it.

10:54 P.M.: That is it. Biden wins solidly on points but no real knockdown blow. Off to the spin room.

Fast Food Nation-State

Editor’s note: As some of the more observant of you may have noticed there is a new box under my profile in which you can join my blog network. This is for the members of Facebook nation (though click on it even if you aren’t because I’m not sure what happens) as you can become part of the Battling the Current network and receive a blog feed through Facebook. There is also theoretically a way that if you have a Blogger account that you can become my Follower. In either case all I can say is “Follow me! Follow me to freedom!” Or just consider this your official membership in my personality cult.

So I have spent the past several days analyzing the fast food options on my 35 minute commute to the office. The findings are rather astounding. Here they are, organized by chain.

McDonald’s: None. Ok, that is not technically true. On the way home I noticed that if I drove the wrong way down a one way street for several blocks I would reach one. And while the draw of a Filet-o-Fish is very strong that is probably too much of a challenge to reach on a regular basis. However, I would like to give ample warning to the people on the sidewalk that during Shamrock Shake season they better watch out.

Burger King: A half a King. There is one but it is connected to a gas station. For some reason I always feel very wary about any fast food joint that is directly tied to a gas station. I always assume that these sites have much lower quality than the standard restaurant. That seems completely ludicrous given the fact that the place is going to clog my arteries either way.

Wendy’s: One. An actual, honest to goodness, stand alone restaurant. However, since I have never been a big Wendy’s fan this isn’t actually that big of a benefit. Sure, the spicy chicken sandwich is an obvious winner but the fries are subpar and who in their right mind would order a baked potato?

Subway: One but it is hidden. They have a sign out (next to an abandoned gas station and in front of a Wal-Mart) but the store itself is way in the back of this strip mall. However, I am more than happy to have one within a close drive of my office. There is nothing better than a five dollar foot long when facing a late night in the office.

KenTacoHut: None, in either the original format or the combined Voltronesque conglomerate. I’m a little saddened that there isn’t one nearby. There is something immensely satisfying in realizing that one can make chicken, pizza or tacos from the same kitchen using the same ingredients and equipment. It’s the fast food equivalent of the Apollo program.

Boston Market: One. Maybe not officially fast food but it is not as though I would sit down there to eat. Amazing that this is there but not any of the other alternatives.

Nathan’s Famous: One. This intrigues me and at some point I will have to stop in. It is a hot dog stand and as a hot dog aficionado I feel that it is my duty to check the place out. But it is a place for New York style hot dogs so I am immediately apprehensive. It’s New York; how would they know how to make a hot dog? My only other hot dog option is this place called Johnnie’s Dog House which, based on the one at the airport, offers all the different regional styles. That is even worse. That just means they do all of them poorly.

Dunkin Donuts: Two. There is hope for this place yet.

Tomorrow night: Vice Presidential debate live blog! Podiums! Moderators! A candidate who uses the word Aboot! Should be interesting to say the least.

Wednesday Night Music Club: If it is fall that can only mean one thing. Hockey season! Here is one of my personal faves, Kathleen Edwards, with the best hockey video ever made.

What makes a candidate (part two)

It is amazing what thoughts come to you at three in the morning. I awoke from a very strange dream and posed the following hypothetical question to myself. Let’s say that someone invented a machine that would record your dreams so that you could watch them over again on the internet. No more struggling over just what you saw; every instance would be recorded in a convenient digital format. However, not only would your dreams be recorded but they would be stored in what could only be described as DreamTube. The entire world could also see exactly what you saw as you slept. If this was the case would you sign up for the machine?

I think for the most part the answer would be no. Now it is true that I would give pretty much anything to reexamine my dreams (partly due to the fact that I get inspired by them and partly for the insight into my subconscious) but I don’t think I would want to open that up to outsiders. This is coming from someone who posts almost every detail about his life to a website every night. Plus, would you want to share every dream you have in which you are naked in a classroom? Would anyone have the courage to say “Here is what my dreams are like world. What do you think?” It’s an interesting thought experiment to say the least.

Anyway, I want to spend a little more time delving into the nature of political candidates. (Yes, I read the comment on last night’s post. It says something about America that I can no longer tell if that was an entirely sincere comment or if it was written in a post-ironic sense.) What I want to discuss are some of the things that a presidential candidate can not be.

The first rule is that they cannot be fat. Yes, Bill Clinton was overweight but I’m talking fat in the William Howard Taft sense of the term. The “could possibly get stuck in his own bathtub” criteria is one that voters could not overlook. It is strange given the obesity levels in the country but could you imagine a 300 pound presidential nominee. Just wouldn’t happen. Try to name a politician who meets that criteria and you would have to struggle. Given that politics is now a visual medium you have to present an image that works in that medium.

Another interesting area is the candidate’s religion. Now as opposed to even the recent past I don’t believe the actual religion of the candidate himself plays a great role. There was minimal issues about John Kerry being catholic (with most of it surrounding his pro-choice stance) and a little more about Joe Lieberman being Jewish but neither of those were major factors. Really, the only religious stance that I feel would be unelectable would be avowed atheists. It is interesting that in a country founded on religious freedom that this would be a major hangup. I just do not see the American population getting behind such a candidate, even though they would have no problem supporting a candidate who only pays lip service to religion. It isn’t a question of morals or ethics as those are not tied to religion. It is just that since so much of the country’s nature is tied to references to god that to actively not believe would prove to be a major hurdle.

I’ll end with a few of the other basic rules of presidential campaigns. It is always a benefit to be tall as historically the taller candidate wins the election. Height just plays better in terms of gaining respect and it shows when you watch the debates. Pay attention to things like posture and camera angles and how Obama’s height advantage creates a positive image of him for no reason other than the fact that he is tall. Also, have a short and recognizable name. Recent elections have gone to the candidate with the simpler last name. No one is sure why but it is actually true. Finally, always release your bad news on a Friday afternoon. No one watches the news on Friday night so you can get away with things.

What makes a candidate (part one)

I think I should state for the public record how incredibly grateful I am that I received a job offer when I did. Given that I sit on a trade floor and could literally watch the markets move on a second by second basis this afternoon the fact that I was sitting at a desk and not on my couch was a very comforting thought. True, the couch would be more comfortable but I have a feeling that I would be there a long time given where this market is headed.

Incredibly though, I actually received an email today asking if I had time for a job interview. What amazes me most is not that someone is hiring in this climate but that I was emailed given that I haven’t been actively searching for a job since I received this offer two and a half months ago. I understood the rejection email I received today but the very serious interview one was a bit of a pleasant shock. At least I am still a bit of a desired quantity.

Completely random note of the night: I have roughly a 35 minute commute to work. It dawned on me today that to my knowledge I do not pass a single stand alone McDonald’s on the entire trip. There might be one in the Wal-Mart I drive by but that would be it. That astounds me. During my 30 minute commute in KC I would pass at least three on the way. I can’t decide if this is a sign of a higher level of culture, a void of one of the true symbols of Americana or a massive business opportunity. I honestly can’t believe that there is any place in America where you could drive on major roads for half an hour and not pass a McDonald’s.

Switching gears to politics I need to write a bit about Sarah Palin in a way that I think the media has completely ignored. Now I’m not going to get into whether or not she is qualified to be vice president. She is so woefully unqualified that I am frightened at the very thought of her being on a ballot. I’m also not going to address the fact that she got schooled in an interview by Katie Couric, someone who spent decades talking mainly to Willard Scott. I’m not even going to try to explain how she could have come in second in the Miss Alaska competition given that there are like five women in the entire state. No, what I think her Achilles heel as a candidate really is is her accent.

As much as we all like to talk about how the US is a meritocracy the fact is that everyone has built in stereotypes and accent is one of the biggest. To use a British example, it’s how we consider someone like Christopher Hitchens with his Oxford accent to be a genius while the guys from Oasis with their Manchester drawl to be uneducated wankers. We connect accents with education. In the US, our political leaders typically have northeast accents, which imply Ivy League educations, or the plain, Midwestern accents of most television broadcasters.

No one questioned George H.W. Bush’s intelligence given his Connecticut accent while George W. Bush’s southern drawl helps to peg him as a moron (along with well, his policy decisions and a whole host of other factors). Bill Clinton had a bit of a southern drawl but only brought it out when he wanted to give an impression of “Aw shucks” and put the country at ease and get a laugh. When he needed to be serious it disappeared. Reagan with his Midwestern pipes and theatrical training was able to gain respect just based on his voice alone. Even both presidential candidates have solid voices. Obama has a combination Hawaiian / Ivy League tone that provides substance as well as an unusual quality while McCain has a well polished military demeanor.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, sounds like one of the characters from Fargo or someone who stepped out of Strange Brew. She has that Canadian twang with a high pitch and a lot of “hey theres” and “you knows” as part of her vocal tics. To anyone outside of Upper Wisconsin and Minnesota the sound of her voice not only does not provide confidence but it is also rather annoying. It’s too high pitched and unsubstantial. This isn’t a shot at her because she is a woman. Hillary with her Chicago roots sounds like a politician. Palin sounds like someone’s mom and you aren’t looking for that in an executive.

Crafting a schedule

(I don’t have any real reason for posting the above picture other than I took it a few weeks ago and I thought that it turned out really cool. Plus, Notre Dame actually won a game this weekend so I felt like I had earned the right to promote the school a little bit.)

This was one of those weekends where I think I accomplished a lot and nothing at all at the same time. Mainly I did a lot of little things that don’t seem to carry much importance but are huge in terms of making this my home as opposed to the place that I seem to find myself.

For example, I got a haircut on Saturday. Again, not a mind blowing experience (unless the hair dryer is really, really powerful) but that is just one of those things that you need to figure out whenever you move to a new town. Given that my hair is not very manageable and I usually try to keep stylists for years going into a random salon and having a stranger cut my hair is a rather frightening experience. I take off my glasses, become essentially blind and hope that the person with the sharp objects know what they are doing. It turned out well and I just feel professional again. I like keeping my hair short; makes me feel like I mean business.

I also finally used my apartment complex’s workout room today. Now I could have used it before but during my first week I didn’t have gym shoes much less workout clothes and the past two weeks have been spent unpacking, which was kind of like working out. But today I finally got on the treadmill and did my three and a half miles. The good news is that these treadmills are better than the ones at my old place. More comfortable on the legs, more places to store stuff and even a television installed in them. On the other hand, the handrails are placed in such a position that I seemed to constantly smack my arms into them to the point that I am watching bruises form as we speak. Not quite the pain I anticipated. Still, this is what I wanted to do. Start working out and get back into that routine.

Really, that was what this weekend was about: routine. I had a very set routine in KC. I played trivia on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. Saturday nights were spent at Harry’s if I did not have anything else to do. Grocery shopping was done every alternate Saturday and I would walk to get my haircut every four weeks (typically timed to not coincide with the grocery shopping). Laundry was also alternate weekend. Sure things could change and I would drop everything to be more social but I had a schedule.

Right now I don’t have anything like that. I come home at night and kind of go “Now what?” I am building a routine for work in terms of when I get up, where I go for lunch, when I leave and when I expect to get home. It’s just that all of my time has been spent trying to get my apartment to a point where I would consider it livable or at least not require constant vigilance on my end. This month has really been a transition month. All I wanted to accomplish was go from being unemployed and living in KC to employed and living in Delaware. I’m finishing off the transition and now need to start building a life.

And boy, is that going to be an interesting challenge.

Best of 120 Minutes: I might be cheating a little bit here. I’m not sure if The Tragically Hip ever appeared on the show. If not, they really should have and it’s my blog so I’ll do what I want. They were alternative rock and Canadian. That should be good enough for anyone.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Flaming Lips “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”
2) Cowboy Junkies “Lay It Down”
3) The Frames “Dance the Devil”
4) My Morning Jacket “Evil Urges”
5) Jesus Jones “Perverse”

Better read than other alternatives

One of the strange things that always happens when I move is that I become incredibly focused on cataloguing and organization. Some of this is sensible. I want my kitchen to be a certain way in order to optimize the experience. Have the pots and pans here, the dishes there, that sort of thing. Other times it makes a little less sense such as earlier tonight when I took everything out of one perfectly good box and placed all of the papers into a perfectly good bin. I did this because I preferred having bins over boxes. The fact that I just repacked notebooks from a job that I left and that I have no intention to ever look at again somehow doesn’t factor into the equation whatsoever.

But that is completely sensible compared to the following.

Now I often mention my spreadsheet containing all of the CDs that I own. It is the driver behind the random CD project and while it is uber geeky there is at least some sense behind it. I first put it together when I went to grad school and not all of my CDs traveled with me. Basically it was a quick reference guide as to what CDs were in which state as I bounced around the country. I kept it up because it was simple to do. Bought a new disc, add it to the spreadsheet.

Well, for the past two nights I have been doing a similar thing with my book collection. I had tried this a few years back but gave up after screaming at the madness of trying to catalog every single book I own. It’s not like I am going to randomly choose books to reread. There is some peace of mind knowing that I have a list of everything that I own but even that isn’t the main reason for this task. See, I am doing this entirely to impress people on Facebook.

I have the Visual Bookshelf app and am now in the process of trying to make it match up with my actual bookshelf. Now when I first joined Facebook I entered almost 300 books that I had read. How does one identify 300 books that they have read? Very simply if you are me and have kept a list of every book that you have read since 1998. Now I’m adding in the books that I own that I read pre-1998.

So that is the how but the bigger question is the why. Part of it is being a completist. If I have a list of books I read I want it to contain every possible data point. But mainly it is because I am an arrogant prick. See, if you click on the profile link it shows where you rank compared to everyone else on Facebook in terms of number of books read. So I have this unbelievable desire to be ranked as highly as possible and to show to the world just how incredibly well read I am. I want people to see me and go “Wow, that guy has read a lot of books.”

Except of course no one would ever actually do that. Who cares if I rank 2,000 on a Facebook app? Am I really impressing anyone when they check to see what I have read and find a surprisingly large number of books discussing pro wrestling? Maybe it is just this little ego boost for myself. It is a way to help convince myself that I actually am smart even if reading a lot of books does not necessarily equate into intelligence. Or maybe I just find it cool. Sometimes that is enough.

The Road Not Taken...

I can’t believe that the president decided that the best time to speak to the nation was during a new episode of Project Runway. Doesn’t he know anything? We as a nation have priorities and at the top of the list is a reality show featuring designers fighting for an opportunity to showcase at a fashion event that matters to no one other than people in the fashion industry. Seriously, it’s not like the U.S. economy is collapsing or anything. Oh yeah, my bad.

(They better be keeping Kenley around because she makes for a great villain. I’d have a huge crush on her (because I totally dig the retro Betty Page look) if it wasn’t for the fact that she is just a total bitch. Instead I’ll continue to long for Leanne who actually looks like someone I could potentially date.)

Driving around town the past few days I have found myself in a very interesting quandary. I will often drive past both Garden of Eden Lane and Snuff Mill Road and I cannot decide which road scares me more by name alone. I can’t bring myself to drive down either of them because of what might be at the end of the road.

Now for Sunff Mill Road that makes perfect sense. You drive down that road and you know that you have stepped foot into a horror movie. At some point you are going to drive by some old, run down building and have your car break down just as you hear the screams of the damned coming from the distance. There will be continual references to the location of a ballroom and a prom that went tragically wrong. If I drove past the old Snuff Mill I would be greatly disappointed if I got out of the car and did not see a hook hanging from the passenger door.

Garden of Eden Lane seems much more inviting. Maybe paradise is waiting for you at the end of the road. There are a few problems with this though. First off, the road is in Delaware. I haven’t consulted with my theologian-on-call about this but I’m pretty sure that the Garden of Eden mentioned in the Bible is not located in Delaware. In addition, I’m not sure what paradise in Delaware would consist of. I could only hope that it contains roads with more than one lane and adequate parking. But my biggest concern is what if you drive down the road to paradise and find out that you don’t particularly like it? Imagine being told “Here is perfection in all its glory” and have your first thought be “Is that all? I expected it to be a lot bigger. And at least have a Baskin-Robbins.”

For some reason I think I’ll tempt the guy with a chainsaw over finding out that paradise isn’t what I had anticipated. At least he looks like he’s a hockey fan.

Wednesday Night Music Club: In a bit of a Damien Rice mood tonight so here is he and the band (including the ever lovely Lisa Hannigan) performing Volcano at Abbey Road studios.

Television worth watching, or at least recording

This will be a relatively quick post as I just got back from the Phillies game. Yes, after only a few weeks I am already going “Yay team from vaguely my geographic location!” I mean, I can understand cheering for Philadelphia without actually living in the city. I’ve cheered for Chicago teams all my life even though I did not technically grow up in the city proper. However, I’m not even living in the proper state to cheer this team. I should be cheering the local Delaware team which is the….I’ll get back to you on that.

There is something odd about living in one of those states which when shown on a map simply have a line pointing to it because the name of the state is bigger than the state itself. I’m not even talking in terms of scale on a map. I believe that if you just wrote the word “Delaware” in the middle of the street you would technically cross state lines. And get hit by an idiot on his cell phone so I wouldn’t recommend it as an experiment.

I’ll just spend the rest of this post reviewing my favorite shows on television: How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. I’ll start with The Big Bang Theory, which still amazes me that it got renewed because there can’t be that many people out there who appreciate physics humor. First off, props for showing Sheldon using the t-shirt folding device that was discussed on this blog a few years ago. It is the easiest and most effective way to have perfectly folded t-shirts. That was the highlight of the episode.

Sadly, that was pretty much the only highlight of the episode (well, that and the whole Indian cinema section). It just seemed to me that the chemistry between Leonard and Penny was completely off. We spent all last season building up to where they kiss and they did and there seemed to be something going there. But in last night’s episode I couldn’t even imagine them being a couple. Heck, even understanding why they were friends seemed to be a stretch. The entire story is built on Penny liking Leonard, maybe not as the man of her dreams but a definite connection being there, while Leonard is totally smitten and completely lost. Last night they just seemed like neighbors who were trying to avoid one another. I hope that is fixed in the future.

(Oh, and the discussion as to what would be required to become Green Lantern was also quite good.)

As someone who has stated that How I Met Your Mother has gone beyond stealing several of the ideas behind my novel but has moved into taking sections of my life and placing them on screen I was rather disappointed with last season on a whole. Ted became a bit of a jerk and a pretty big man slut. (I’m not sure what the technical term is for a guy who sleeps around more than he probably should. A More?) Robin just kind of existed in her own little world and Barney was the only one on the show worth watching.

Well, the show moved in the right direction though I still have some issues. We have luckily quickly forgotten the whole “Barney got hit by a bus” subplot as well as the “We all hate Barney” issue. Ted is engaged to a character who, other than the three minute date, the audience has no vested interest in other than it is really nice to have Sarah Chalke on television. When they brought up how Ted knows nothing about her it was a nice way of saying neither does the audience. I’m not sure where that story is going and since he is our hero (and my surrogate) I’d sure like to know what is going to happen next.

Easily the best part was Barney’s falling in love with Robin. First, yes my new apartment resembles Barney’s in great detail up to and including the life size stormtrooper statue. This is the storyline that will probably carry the show for the rest of the season. We want to see Barney and Robin together because they would make a great couple. Plus, Barney would become human and have to change his ways. Most of all, this is awesome because we have a situation in which Barney doesn’t have a clue how to act. It is always fun to watch someone so put together be absolutely clueless. And the fact is, when she left him at the end of the episode you felt sympathy (and in my case, empathy) for the guy. Not bad for a sitcom.

A road story...

Here is a story from my move that pretty much sums up the entire experience in a nutshell.

So I left Kansas City on the sixth and it wasn’t as tearful a goodbye as one might have expected I was still decently choked up. I had a few sad goodbyes over the previous days and I am still missing many of my friends. But I knew that I had to move on to my next adventure so I went from Kansas City to Chicago on Saturday, Chicago to South Bend on Sunday and then the long haul from South Bend to Wilmington on Monday.

By long haul I mean that was roughly twelve hours in the car from when I left South Bend to when I made it to Wilmington. While Pennsylvania was pretty to drive through and had rolling hills and tunnels Ohio was quite possibly the least interesting state that I have ever driven through. Technically Iowa was worse but you would expect to come across something in Ohio. People actually live there.

On the way I listened to Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” on CD. I thought it would be a rather fitting listen: hearing someone talk about walking the Appalachian Trail while making my way to the East Coast. It was a very wise choice (much thanks is owed to my good friend who picked it out for me while we were at the bookstore) and it was funny and interesting and made the hours go by much quicker. However, I found out that there is one interesting side effect from listening to an entire book on tape in one sitting.

I basically spent six hours with this tape as my sole companion. So all I heard was Bill Bryson narrating his experience on the Trail. After six hours of this you discover that your internal monologue, which typically sounds like you or at least the way you wish your voice would sound, has suddenly taken on the voice of the narrator. It was as if Bill Bryson had suddenly stepped inside my head and decided to narrate my thoughts. Even more incredible, my thoughts began to take the form of his writing style so my internal monologue became this detached, almost third person, view of myself in someone else’s voice. Quite disturbing.

I finally make it to Wilmington and spend an hour unpacking my car. It wasn’t that my car was packed to the roof or anything. I intentionally kept what I brought to a minimum and let the movers take care of the rest. However, since I park in a high rise garage and live in a high rise building and the two aren’t directly connected it meant that I had to take two elevator trips, a walk outside and a walk to my apartment, which happened to be as far away from the elevator as possible, just to complete one trip. Luckily I learned from when I moved to KC and brought a folding chair with me so I had a place to sit down.

After twelve hours on the road and another hour lugging gear into my apartment all I wanted to do was take a shower. I had prepared for this eventuality as well. Not only did I bring towels but I brought my shower curtain from my spare bathroom. My old place (much like my new place) has two bathrooms. I don’t need two bathrooms. I have a two bedroom because I use the spare room partially as an office and partially as a place to store all the stuff I should really throw out. At least in KC my spare bathroom was next to the guest bedroom and living room. Here both bathrooms are next to each other making the design seem rather meaningless. Anyway, this is a long way for me to say that I had a shower curtain that had almost never been used in the past five years.

I thought it would be good for me to change things up and use what was my spare shower curtain in the master bathroom. After five years a change of color was needed. So I put up the curtain and finally get ready to take my shower. Turn on the water and discover that there is no hot water. In fact, if I turn it all the way to hot there is no water at all. After swearing a great deal I decided to suck it up and take a cold shower as painful as it may be.

Once I finished I tried the sink in the same bathroom. It had hot water. As did the kitchen. As well as the sink and the tub in the entire bathroom. In fact, the only thing in my apartment that did not have hot water was the shower that I was standing in. After all of that time on the road I came down to having a fifty-fifty chance at having a warm shower and I chose poorly. That is moving in a nutshell.

So the next day I moved the shower curtain to the spare bathroom. They’ve since fixed the hot water and everything is organized. But seriously, there is nothing quite as amazing as realizing that you flipped a coin and picked the wrong side.