So one of my minions at work was telling me this morning how the CEO was hovering over his shoulder while he was working. The minion was trying to print some stuff for CEO's big board meeting today. Join me as I reenact this magic moment in Blank Stare Theatre:

Minion: "He was hovering over my shoulder the whole time."
Kafkaesque: "You know who Carlos Castaneda is?"
Minion: blank stare
Kafkaesque; "He wrote these books about Don Juan and the Yaqui Indians?"
Minion: blank stare
Kafkaesque: "They thought that death was constantly hovering at your left shoulder, just waiting for you to see him."
Minion: blank stare
Kafkaesque: "So, you see, He's kind of like death, hovering at your left shoulder."
Minion: blank stare
Kafkaesque: "Ha ha ha! Get it?"
Minion (edging away): "Oh...uh. Yeah. Ha ha. Yaqui Indians. Right."
Kafkaesque: "Oh, the times we have."

This kind of thing happens to me a lot. I can't decide which Baldwin should play Minion in the movie version. My role will, of course, be played by Jet Li, master funnyman.

Legodeath

See your favorite torture devices, etc all lovingly depicted in Lego.

Here's another Shaggie picture that doesn't take forever to load. Because I care about you and want you to have fast-loading shaggies.

Sorry about the whole alliteration thing happening in the last post.

Also, just wanted to mention that I got a fax spam today for Grandfather Clocks. Chances are not real good that I'm going to be strumming along on the ol' gueetar or playing Quake, and suddenly look down at the fax machine, when all of a sudden it'll hit me: That's what my life has been missing all this time! A Grandfather Clock!

And not a good Grandfather Clock either. I want an incredibly cheap Grandfather Clock for oh, say, 300 bucks. One that's going to break in the first month I have it and then gather dust and wait for me to hurt myself by walking into it late at night.

Another exciting feature of the GRANDFATHER CLOCK NEW YEAR BLOWOUT fax spam is that they promise delivery by Christmas. That's right. In just eleven short months, these speed demons of the timepiece world will have that baby on your doorstep, ready to start keeping time adequately until the one year warranty runs out. I'm guessing after eleven months most people would have forgotten they ordered a 300 dollar Grandfather Clock and might be more than a little puzzled when one showed up. Just imagine if you got liquored up one night and went ahead and placed your order. What a surprise on Christmas morning!

But eleven months! That's like the gestation period of an elephant for god's sake.

And 300 dollars? For a Grandfather Clock? I don't want it to be made out of balsa wood. I want some quality in my needlessly grandiose chronometer!

It's the same principle as a $1.99 Vegas buffet. Things just should not be that cheap. At least after you eat a $1.99 Vegas buffet, you don't have to wait eleven months for the result.

Dude, demonically annoying advertising apparently works wonders.

An oldie but goodie: Shaggies

Just in case you feel an urge to shamble around in the forest looking like a pile of animated cole slaw. And who doesn't now and again?

True color of the universe revealed.

It's minty green. Kind of looks like a Mentos or something. Alternately, it resembles the innards of one of those avocados that aren't quite as good as the Haas avocados but are much cheaper. Hence, the universe is an inferior avocado.

Just thought you should know.

Existential Pud: the Web's Premier Source For The Convergence of Bubble Gum Comics and Existential Philosophy

[via MetaFilter]

The Elves and The Sportbike

Teaches valuable lessons for any child considering becoming a motorcyclist as an adult: don't steal motorcycles, keep your motorcycle right side up, don't hire elves to take care of your kids

If there's one thing I tell people time and time again, it's "Don't hire elves to take care of your kids!"

How hard is that? I know they look all cuddly and stuff, but they're just waiting to get on that sportbike and cause some grievous mayhem. I know what you're thinking: "Wouldn't it be alright if I just let the elves watch the kids for a little while, like for an hour every other Sunday?"

NO!

Report a Celebrity Brush with Jurgen Prochnow:

"Jurgen was sitting 4 seats down the row I was in, and yes I did sneak peeks at him occasionally, and no, unfortunately, I don't know what he smelled like. I was recovering from a cold I couldn't smell a thing. But he did look like he came to the premiere fresh from the shower ;) "

I feel confident that within the decade, there will be at least ten Jurgen Prochnow Celebrity Brushes. We just have to want it, people.

Also: Find out just how many times Jurgen will be on TV this month.

The Jesus Filmography, which is kind of Jurgen related since he's on the list for having been kinda Jesusy in The Seventh Sign.

Even more tangential: This incredibly annoying page that's kind of about Dune but which somehow finds an excuse to talk about Kung Fu a little bit. Nice to see Kwai Chang getting a mention there. Waaaay down at the bottom there's mention of Jurgen getting burning glass dropped on his noggin.

Here are some diseases that are probably really horrible and I hope I never contract, but which nevertheless sound sort of quaint and amusing:

Shingles - Can anyone hear the name of this affliction without a mental image of a picturesque little disease-infested cottage, roof thatched with the advanced form of Chicken Pox? I sure can't.

Rickets - I have no idea what this is. It sounds like it has to do with two of my favorite things though: 1. Robots and B. frogs. Hence, Robot Frogs! or Frog Robots I guess would work too. I'll have to contact the FDA to see if any of the treatment for Rickets involves Robot Frogs.

The Gout - This one sounds like it should be said by a pirate. As in "Arr! Ye've got The Gout, Jim-Boy! Nothin a quick trip round the keel won't fix, though, eh me lubbin finey?" (Note: "Me lubbin finey" is not widely accepted as real pirate talk. Some of your more advanced pirates would try this sort of phrase, in hopes that it would catch on amongst their pirate colleagues, with little success. Every once in a while, a gem would crop up though, and a mellifluous turn of phrase like "newt-booty" would be born.)
(Note: previous note totally untrue. I just got carried away.)

Scurvy - Another pirate disease! Pirates seem a fun-loving bunch when you picture them lashing people to the mast, having feisty cutlass duels and counting their captive's teeth, all the while sucking on half a lime, which would protrude from their mouths, and give the impression that they had a green beak.

From the good folks at Despair, Inc:

Bittersweets: Valentine's candy with such heartwarming messages as "Luv 2 Stalk U" and "See Other People".

Come to think of it...my wife sent me that link. Wait just a cotton-pickin minute here!

HEY!

I just added this crazy whacked-out BlogSnob Ad Thing to this here hootenanny. As a result, waaaaay down on the bottom left, underneath the links, next to the giant dust bunny, just this side of Over The Hills and Far Away, you'll (hopefully) see TextAds for other sites. Don't let them scare you. But also, let it be known that anybody could be randomly advertising on them. So if you click-thru (high tech there, eh?) and get sent to the blog of a pale friendless virgin who's into staying up late of a Saturday and painting his D&D miniature collection, don't say I didn't warn you.

Not that there's anything wrong with having a D&D miniature collection, you understand.

"Cream Puff Caspar Milquetoast"

You know, from The Piano Has Been Drinking by Tom Waits. Maybe you don't know. You should know. Inevitably, the moment will come in your life where you will be quizzed about this song. Maybe someone will make a comment about Foster Brooks or Dudley Moore or some other drunk-guy-shtick person, and then The Piano Has Been Drinking will come up. It's not something you can avoid, so get used to the idea. And be prepared. Impress your friends with your extensive knowledge of Tom Waits minutiae.

Anyway, Here's the lowdown on Milquetoast, via pracowity, who certainly seems to be all up in arms about this language thing. I bet I made him mad just by saying "up in arms". Somewhere, a dart is being thrown at my picture this very moment.

God, apparently, hates figs.

Who knew?

[thx, bungee benji]

Bad Poetry. Get some inside of you.

The Worst Poem Ever Written?

links via mattpfeff

Now I know how to spice up my next cocktail party: Lifesize Standups!

I'll put Newt Gingrich over by the potato salad. Dr. McCoy over by the Little Smokies.

Now...where do you put the 5'5" Talking Gorilla Standup? I think by the dessert tray sounds just right. Right next to 6 Foot Uncle Sam.

Yep. Gonna be the best party ever.

Quick! Call a DeskJet Printer exorcist!

My printer is, quite possibly, possessed by the hoary host of the netherworld. At random times, and for no good reason at all, it will spit out a page of paper. It is not, as was suggested to me, printing in tongues, but I feel that eventuality is pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point. I think the random nature of these paper outbursts may not be random at all, and may be indicative of a larger and much more sinister scheme at work behind the scenes. My fear is that the printer is only trying to lull me into a false sense of security with the seemingly random paper spew.

I think it's trying to kill me.

Think about it. All that has to happen is that I fall asleep in front of my printer (a prospect which is frighteningly possible, in my fast-paced world of shirking), and happen to expose my tender neck...next thing you know, it's a paper-cut laceration to the jugular! They'll find me lurching around back here, slamming against the cubical walls as the blood spurts in slow motion, the Matte Finish Great White Imaging and Photo Paper still protruding from the angry wound as the choral music swells to a fever soprano pitch, which would maybe even include a theramin or glockenspiel.

And then it'll all be over. But at least I won't have to worry about memos anymore. So there's that.

I do wish Captain Howdy or whoever it is that's possessing my InkJet would keep things little quieter though. It's hard enough to sleep, much less have a meeting with the company president, while your printer is yelling out things like "You're all gonna die up there!" and "La plume de ma tante!"

So it goes.

So I am back, after a week in Atlantic City. Actually let me capitalize that. A WEEK in Atlantic City. If you ever want to dump a body, Atlantic City is the place for you.

I like Las Vegas. I like gambling. I like glitz and chintz and cheese (particularly a good camembert or Port Salut), but I draw the line. In Vegas, you have casinos with carpet that look like someone vomited Play-Doh, you have row upon row of slot machines slowly sucking the souls out of the dead-eyed button-pushers in front of them, but you also have other things to do, like Siegfried and Roy statues and the Liberace Museum. Atlantic City has casinos. Period.

And a lot of people wearing gold chains.

You leave the casino in Atlantic City and there's just nothing else going on. Unless you get mugged and beaten so badly you have to be identified by your dental records. Actually, they check you at the airport to make sure that you have your dental records along, so they can identify you later. Nice of them. When I say "airport", I mean Philadelphia airport. I flew into Philly and had to take a shuttle for an hour and a half to get to Atlantic City. On the way back, though, I did get filmed by some local Philadelphia news station, so if you saw someone glaring at the camera on your local Philadelphia news, you may have gotten a glimpse into the depths of my admiration of Atlantic City. They filmed my face, then my bags (which I made sure to pack as heavy as possible for added fun), then my face again. I never understand these people who just lose it when they are on camera and start jumping around and waving. My look told the cameraman pretty much instantly that I was considering some Sean Penn-like action if he didn't stop filming me.

Anyway. One humorous thing that happened while I was there was that I had flowers sent to me accidentally. I had a message in my room that there was a delivery for me, so I went down to the concierge, and it turned out to be a dozen yellow and red roses in a big vase. They were addressed to my wife's name care of me. I thought this rather peculiar, but figured my wife had sent me flowers, just for generally being a great husband and all, and because she wanted the mental image of me staggering through a casino to the elevator with a giant bouquet of roses. I did the aforementioned staggering and made it back to my room, a task made even more enjoyable by the fact that the elevators in the tower my room was in were out of service, so I had to hike quite a ways, constantly assaulted by groups of old women screeching "Oh! They're gooooorgeous!" and a housekeeping woman who indignantly demanded that I give her the flowers.

I made it up to my room and called my wife, who decried any knowledge of the flowers. So I called back down to the desk and it became apparent that they were not for me. The concierge had seen the name, and matched it to mine, in a fit of what can only be called non-brilliant decision making. I also discovered that I am a pushover. I asked if I could leave them outside my door for pickup, to which the concierge replied "Oh no! Those are really valuable!"

If I had any sort of a spine, I would have demanded they come and pick them up. Instead I meekly said "OK" and brought them back down, under yet another hail of abuse from lonely octogenarian women.

*sigh*

Anyway, I'm back and I promise to not be bitter like this in the future.

~~~~~~~~~

As far as the "In The Elevator" feature is concerned, I had unsubstantiated reports that there were little bits of scrambled egg in the elevator in my absence, but I can't really be sure. I did, however, catch the lingering aroma of Vicks Vapo-Rub in there today, so I'll add that.

I don't know how many of you wash your own car. I do. By that, I mean that I wash my own car. Not your car. So when you saw me out there the other day rubbing your car vigorously, it was not for any purpose that included cleanliness. I can tell you that much.

I wash my little car at one of those do-it-yourself car wash places, where you get your tokens and pile them on into the machine, then perform the wash with an ever-increasing anxiety that you haven't put enough money in and the time will run out, leaving you with a sudsy ride for all eternity. That kind of place.

Anyway, my usual program at the car wash is to put my 87 quarters in the little machine, and set the selector to "Rinse" which usually results in a startlingly strong spray of water out of the hose. I learned it was startlingly strong when I attempted to rinse some suds off my hand in the stream of water and lost about 3 layers of skin. The hand-rinsing resembled that old Civil Rights Protest footage you always see with the protesters having firehoses turned on them, or perhaps a prison atrocities movie.

After the rinse, I move straight to the "Foaming Brush" portion of the ritual. The Foaming Brush is connected by a hose to the ceiling of your little car-washing alcove and rotates to allow you to easily circumnavigate your car. Theoretically. I don't seen to be able to accomplish the Foam Brushing without some sort of minorly embarrassing or life-threatening episode. At some point in the circuit around the car, I always manage to get tangled up in the hose, or have to execute a dainty pirouette to stop the hose wrapping around my neck anaconda-style. If you've ever seen Conan The Barabarian, where he has to fight a giant snake puppet thing, you get the idea of me battling the Foaming Brush.

Conan, of course, was only dealing with a puppet. I, on the other hand, have an adversary which not only threatens to cut off the vital supply of oxygen to my brain, but also continually spits out foam (unless of course it's one of the innumerable occasions where the Foaming Brush has somehow been rendered impotent and can summon only the feeblest of sud-streams. This is roughly every other time I wash my car.)

So, here I am trying to deal with the Herculean task of taming the Foaming Brush, in public I might add, so everyone else at the car wash can watch my bumbling exploits. This is too much for someone as uncoordinated as myself to deal with. The floor is slick with suds, I have to suds up the car before the machine begins to beep that it's running out of time, and I have to keep the Brush in contact with the car without either getting choked to death or slipping and falling on my butt.

Do you begin to appreciate how tough my life is?

That's about all I have to say about the Foaming Brush actually. I know you probably don't care, but think of my travails the next time you do something even moderately coordinated. Maybe you can donate some coordination my way. I could sure use it.

I'll be out of town for a week or so, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to update for a while. Please find all your non-sequiturs and rambling elsewhere for the time being. But don't let me catch you wandering off to someone else's blog while I'm gone! There'll be hell to pay.

Another rambunctious Kafkaesque Great Idea:

Baked Potato Jelly Beans

You heard me. Baked Damned Potato Jelly Beans. They already make Buttered Popcorn Jelly Beans and Unspeakable Evil Jelly Beans (also known as the horrible light brown Peanut Flavor, which you think are Root Beer or something wildly unlike the hideousness of the Peanut Flavor, but in fact turn out to be Peanut Flavor. As an aside here, I recently scarfed a small, maybe thirty-bean size Jelly Belly assortment, out of which a full SEVEN were Unspeakable Evil Flavor. This leads me to the conclusion that either 1. The Jelly Belly people really want to get rid of those Peanut Flavor beans; or B. that there is a cosmic law that means you end up with a disproportionately large number of your least favorite flavor bean. I wouldn't want to say. Maybe somewhere out there, some poor sap is eating Watermelon Jelly Bellies by the handful, nonplussed by their watermeloney goodness, tears rolling down his cheeks as he wishes for the Unspeakable Peanut Beans that even now haunt my kitchen counter, refusing in their evil to even be thrown away, and remaining as a chill reminder that not all Jelly Beans are your friends).

So why not? The marketing is a cinch: Jelly Beans already look like baked potatoes, so just wrap them in tinfoil and you're ready to roll. You could even have an assortment which featured different toppings, like BacOs, Sour Cream 'n' Chive, "Butter-like", and my favorite baked potato topping: Hot Fudge.

Maybe if it goes well, I could get the Magical Elves at Kafkaesque Labs to whip up something really tasty, like a Clamfruit Jelly Bean. Now we're cookin with gas baby! But hell, those layabouts can't even make a potato that wants to mash itself, so how could they even come close to this kind of grandeur?

...ok maybe that was just a Marginally Good Idea, or Borderline Catastrophically Bad Idea. Only time will tell.

A new feature has been added to the random detritus on the left over there: In The Elevator

Why? I live on the fourth floor and therefore ride an elevator to and from my apartment hive home every day. In the elevator, I am often surprised by some little thing that just seems out of place in an elevator. Today for instance, there was a small "baby" carrot, sitting innocuously in the corner. As an elevator companion, I had no qualms about it. I didn't get flustered or wonder if maybe I should be making conversation with it. To begin with, it was way down there on the floor and I get a little woozy if I bend down while the elevator is in motion, so that was out of the question. I try to be well behaved in the elevator, since the time I encouraged my wife and a friend to join me in jumping up and down in an elevator in San Francisco and we ended up stuck in what was a very small elevator for forty-five minutes.

(The first words out of the hotel manager's mouth: "Were you jumping in there?"...our meek and probably unconvincing answer: "no!")

No. It was just a little carrot there in the elevator with me, so I thought I would keep a little record of the odd things that make my daily vertical journey with me. Now that I have said that, there will probably never be anything else remotely obscure in there. Mark my words.

I've just been notified that my sister may be reading this site today, and she's a teacher, so now is the time for me to recant all my grammatical indiscretions. Let it be told: I Recant!

For 2002:

- No more saying "no biggie". Every time I say it, I'm going to cut off a finger, until typing gets to be really difficult.

- The whole "mullet" thing. Not really all that funny anymore.

still to come: Kafkaesque vs. The Foaming Brush

So all my sweet sweet painkiller is gone, and I'm still marginally lumped up, which gives me a really great excuse to be cranky (one of my favorite hobbies).

Amusing anecdote about what an idiot I am:

I am currently playing Clive Barker's Undying, which is an extremely good first-person shooter/horror game for the PC. I was racing right through this game, blasting all the unspeakable, Stygian horrors into horrible little bits at an honestly pretty alarming rate. Then, it happened.

I was cruising around this island where I had to sneak up on a bunch of swarthy pirate types and bust a cap in their pirate booties, something I accomplished with relative aplomb, and I went on my merry way, to bring more death to the forces of darkness. But I noticed that I was moving incredibly slowly. As I meandered across the island, and fought my way through a barn infested with hideous baboon-type thingies, the slowness continued.

I cursed my computer: "Damn you computer!" I cried. "Why must you antagonize me so?!"

No improvement.

I cursed the game: "Damn you Clive Barker's Undying! Why must you test me in this way?!"

Nothing.

The next challenge facing me was a leap from the barn roof on which I stood to a neighboring roof. I tried this, and I am not exaggerating here, eight thousand times. I would almost make it, but not make it, and go crashing earthward, damning my virtual self to at the very least severely twisted ankles again and again. I howled with misery at the callous, uncaring world, and made a few agonizingly slow circuits of the ENTIRE island again, in search of something else that might help with my jumping dilemma. Nothing seemed to help.

Nothing, that is, until I accidentally hit the "K" key, thereby toggling the "Sneak" mode off for the game.

OK, that was an extremely geeky anecdote, I know. But I just picture this hapless video guy that I am controlling having to constantly crawl and shuffle along, preparing to jump in slow motion, knowing there is no possible way he will make it, because his Creator and Controller is a complete goober who can't figure out when he's in "sneak" mode. Enough said.

In case any of you doubt the veracity of this little tale, just ask my wife about the time that, after a year of owning a particular coat, which I wore almost daily, I looked up with an expression of childlike glee on my face and said "Hey! This jacket has pockets!"

I rest my case.

The jaw pain and swelling continue, invulnerable to the soothing efforts of frozen peas, corn, and even soy beans. It's quite amazing what an effect a small thing like the swelling of your jaw can have on your whole appearance. I really look like a different person. I kind of look like an old guy now, one of those jowly old guys who hem and haw a lot. I'm OK with the hemming, but I really don't know anything about hawing, so I guess I still have a ways to go.

I had this weird memory of the tooth-pulling, wherein the dental hygienist, assistant person was having this conversation with the doctor:

Dentist (or oral surgeon) to me: "You're going to be numb here, hopefully. Ha ha. [Dentists pretty much universally have this talent for actually laughing like the way you write laughing: "Ha ha." I think it's their way of subtly telling you that they don't really care if you think it's funny or not, because they make more money than you do, and deserve every cent of it for having to go rooting around in your gaping maw, which has to pretty disgusting. I think they also start talking to you more to see how spaced out you're getting from all the novocaine]

Hygienist: "Wow, wouldn't that suck if you were numb like that forever?"

Dentist to Hygienist: "Well, some people are like that. If they break their jaw or something."

Hygienist: "Wow!"

That conversation just struck me as a little weird. Were they trying to let me know that I should be grateful for these hours of pain and swelling that I am now suffering through, with the help of my friend Mr. Codeine? Maybe they were trying to warn me, now that it was too late, that there was indeed a chance I would never feel a thing with my jaw again. It is true that this is the same hygienist who was telling me how she used to get all kinds of free drugs from the last dentsist she worked at, and launched into a rather lengthy comparison of the relative merits of Vicadin vs. Codeine for recreational use.

Movies viewed so far:

cheezy rentals:
Rush Hour 2 - Kind of funny. The whole "You wacky Asian!", "You wacky black person!" thing is wearing a little thin though.
The Breed - Movie about vampires in some knock-off 1984 future that had the budget of about twelve dollars. Kind of like watching cut-scenes from a kind of crappy video game with a budget of twelve dollars. The only movie I've seen in a while that actually has "level bosses".
Mission To Mars - Excruciatingly boring. I like Tim Robbins, but after it took his character ten minutes to finally die in an extended "floating off into the coldness of space" scene, I'm not so sure.

From the Kafkaesque video library:
O Brother, Where Art Thou? - A classic of course.
High Fidelity - I love this movie. Don't ask why. I just do.

on the slab for today:
Panic
Robin and Marian
Caddyshack
Following

Only 5 codeines remaining? How will I survive?

Hi everyone! I just got back from two hours of super-fun!

That's right, I got my lower two wisdom teeth extracted, and boy was it fun!

The dentist had to give me about four rounds of shots, for some reason, which made it even better. So I'm a little loopy right now. The lower half of my head feels like a tetherball that has been played with by wolverines for a couple of hours. I am now eyeing bags of frozen corn and peas, wondering which frozen veggie will bring down the swelling more effectively.

Just a couple of comments before I retire to watch movies for the next 37 hours: When the dentist is levering your tooth out, he is levering it against your cheek, a part of your fragile form which has not been anaesthetized. I had a momentary thought: "Will my cheek in fact withstand the pulling, or will it give way, leaving me wisdom-toothless but with a flapping, torn cheek that will frighten children and result in my forever being known as 'Flappy Cheek'?"

I also thought this: "Are you pulling out my tooth, or bits of my skull? Because it kind of feels like the skull, doc."

Ahh, sweet codeine, take me away!

mmm! New Wong Kar-Wai film, "2046" seems to be rumored for 2002. Don't know who Wong Kar-Wai is? Shame! Shame on you! Go and rent ChungKing Express (Don't mind Tarantino's ugly mug introducing it...that's what the FF button is for. Just say no to giant film egos!) or Fallen Angels this instant! Or, if you want to ease into it with a little romance, try In The Mood For Love, simply one of the best films of the last couple of years.

I'm serious. Let's get on the ball here! I'll turn this weblog around right now!

Try me.