I went out and bought myself a real and bona fide type Weber kettle (the Weber kettle is, of course, named after famous Weimar Republic figure, father of modern Sociology, and inventor of the shish kebob, Max Weber) this weekend, which means that I will be able to barbecue the turkey this Thanksgiving. This is important, because your average Thanksgiving turkey-cooking doesn't involve enough danger as far as I'm concerned. If I can't visualize a scenario in which I'm running into walls with my hair on fire, it's just not fun.

Of course, I have always been a proponent of The Bacon Hat Method of turkey cooking, which is possible either in the oven or on the grill. The Bacon Hat is formed by draping bacon over the turkey's back while it is cooking, thereby basting your turkey with healthful bacon fat drippings. Afterwards, the bacon lattice assumes a somewhat convex shape (unless your turkey was in really, really good shape).

If you are of a mind, you can seize the bacon from the barbecuing bird, place it on your head and prance about the garden declaring in a sing-song voice "Look at me! I'm wearing The Bacon Hat!" until the hot grease runs onto your scalp, and the paramedics must be called, in a time-honored ritual that brings all families closer together.

Also, in a effort to soothe our troubled carnivore consciences, we got a Free Range turkey this year. Well, actually it's more so we don't get some steroid crazed Butterball. I mean, with all the drugs they pump into those little guys, they might just reanimate and lurch sickeningly around the table in the middle of dinner, and no-one wants that.

Yesterday, we traveled to scenic Carson, California (not too far from scenic Compton, California) to see the 2003 MLS Cup. I am pleased to report that my Earthquakes ran roughshod over the hapless Chicago Fire and won the championship for the second time in three years.

Of course, no-one cares about that. This is fairly obvious from the fifteen seconds of coverage the exciting 4-2 championship game received on ESPN's Sportscenter last night. Thank you, ESPN anchors for presenting the beautiful game as if it were a sixth grade cheerleading competition in Iowa.

I know soccer's not hugely popular in America, but it is disheartening to see such blatant disregard for a sport that's so popular the world over, and played by millions in the US. If major media in this country continues this attitude towards soccer, they'll be left behind when all the kids who love the game get older and make soccer as huge here as it is is elsewhere in the world.

If you care a little, contact ESPN and ask for a little more coverage of the most popular sport in the world.

We all loved Oolong the Rabbit, who brought us such joy with the head-performances over the years, and we were all devastated when Oolong was taken up.

I didn't know that Oolong's owner has a new rabbit, named Yuebing (Moon Cake) and is balancing things on her head once again!

Absenteeism is rampant here at My Life as an American Gladiator.

Employees have stopped even pretending to work, and are instead making erotic shadow puppets on the walls. The "gentleman's reverse astronaut" is proving a particular favorite.

Collectible figurines on desks now outnumber actual workers, and the prophecy of the ancients that the giant-headed Bruce Lee figurine will one day defeat the 12" plastic Godzilla, bringing a new era of peace and harmony to our land, has come to pass. Harmony, however, has yet to be empirically gauged.

The tunnel out to the parking lot is almost complete. Once the papier-mache head is complete, the jailbreak plans can begin in earnest. Various factions has seen various movies and are variously calling for guarantees that

1. Roberto Benigni prepare the rabbit
b. No sympathetic senior citizen characters cut off their own fingers with a small hand-axe.
3. In the event Pele should break his ribs, the Germans are not allowed to punch him repeatedly in the chest.
4. Gobo Fraggle finally get his shit together.

I grow old...I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Actually, come to think of it, I probably won't wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. It's kind of weird. I mean, what are people going to think? That I'm some kind of rockabilly guy or something, trapped in a retro movement whose time has been and gone? That I'm into wearing capri pants or something? That my ankles need to breathe?

No. I'll keep the bottoms of my trousers at the normal level. But I might roll my socks down.

The relative level of my pantaloons notwithstanding, it is true that I am 32 years old today.

The days spin faster, a whirling vortex drawing me deathward, ever deathward. And as I decay, as I fall to decrepitude, will I know meaning? Will I find the answer that justifies the hideous torment of existence?

Probably not. But at least there's Indian food and beer to while away the time.

Created at the astonishingly fun Church Sign Generator.

Crazy dream last night.

I was, for some unknown reason, looking at real estate in San Francisco. At the end of a cul-de-sac was a two story house with a sign out front, just like a For Sale sign, but it said "HAUNTED" in Arial 50 pt. font, red shadowed letters on a shiny white sign. I looked up at the front door, which was up a few steps like you see in the city (listen, I know I live in Orange County now, but San Francisco is still the city to me, OK? We cool?) and the front door flapped open once or twice.

Next thing I know, I'm running down the street, arms and legs flailing, making those "Bleeeeaaaa! Bleeeeaaaa!" noises that only truly scared people make, and get this: the sign was chasing me! Just a sign that said "HAUNTED". It was keeping up with me like in some terrible film school stop-motion animation project.

I don't really remember anything else about the dream. But there are a couple of things to consider here:

1. It doesn't really matter what's chasing you in a dream. It's just the idea of being chased. Or what the thing that's chasing you represents. In this case, it was a sign. Semiotically speaking, in this dream, the sign was the signifier, which is more than a little confusing.

b. My dreams are too low budget to afford a good monster. Maybe, though, I'm too jaded by a lifetime of horror-movie viewing. After all, I think the scariest movies are the ones that show the least. Maybe my subconscious is getting all arty on me, and will soon be dropping me a postcard from Cannes, saying only "I must find myself. Au revoir."

About time it did something useful.

I cut myself shaving again this morning. It's ridiculous. My features are apparently a little too obtrusive for the Gillette people.

I've got the two blade razor. I know they've got the Mach 3 Razor, with the jaw-dropping innovation of 3 whole entire blades. Now I see they've gone to the crazy-insane maniacal lengths of four blades on one razor. I'm thinking I'll still cut myself though.

What I need is some sort of mask made entirely of razor blades. I could just insert my face into it, execute a dainty pirouette, and I'd be all clean-shaven and ready to go.





Maybe that's not such a great idea.

Not so very long ago, I was the victim of a Surprise Public Speaking Seminar at work. Of course, I should expect these things, seeing as how I am a technical writer and marketing guy who sits in front of a cathode ray tube all day. It just makes sense that they should want to keep me on my toes by including me in something that's totally unrelated to my job function.

"Gee, Kaf," the President of the company will say. "I appreciate that you're trying to meet your deadline on this new brochure, but I think it's real important that you take a couple of days to learn how cheese is processed." or perhaps "You never know when a crash-course in emergency thyroid surgery is going to come in handy."

So anyway, I was roped into this public speaking thing which was basically me and all the company salesmen and executives, and I got to have a marginally good time for the next couple of days learning how to gesture expansively. They really wanted us to gesture in a big way. One guy gestured so hard he dislocated his shoulder and had to be airlifted to a local hospital. You probably read about it in the news.

I was sure gesturing a lot. Wild, arching gestures of the type seldom seen outside of amateur theatrical productions of Annie. The result of this is that now any time I need to have a conversation, I have to first measure the maximum clearance of the ceiling, just to be sure. Also, people talking to me must maintain a distance of three (3) feet, so as not to be injured if I get all crazy and start some hot gesticulation.

Also, the well-paid public speaker person (who was eerily reminiscent of Fred Gwynne in Pet Sematary (and later told me some fun stuff about taking lots of acid in the sixties and getting into Transcendental Meditation), but that's neither here nor there) introduced us to a fun mnemonic device to rid yourself of "filler words". Filler words are "uh" or "um" or "so", or "or", come to think of it. But I kid "or". "Or" is a perfectly fine word. One that begins to lose its meaning if you look at it enough on the screen, becoming instead a strange and cryptic symbol. Try it with me and see. No? Maybe that's just me.

The fun mnemonic device is that you get your spouse (or a live-in companion of some sort. I'm not here to judge.) to snap their fingers every time you use one of the filler words. Sounds pleasant, doesn't it?

"So, how was your day"

"Uh --"

*SNAP!*

"Oh, ha ha, that's right. I keep on uh --"

*SNAP!*

"Maybe we could just um --"

*SNAP!*

"I hate myself and want to um --"

*SNAP!*

Until, inexorably, someone ends up disemboweled and buried at the bottom of the garden. Don't say I didn't warn you.

But the main thing about the public speaking seminar that worried me, once I got used to the frankly ridiculous fact that I was there, was the being filmed part. The concept of being filmed doesn't particularly bother me. I gave my little speeches with relative aplomb, and got polite applause and all that, but I had a nagging fear every time the camera was on. You see, I've seen too many movies like Minority Report and Strange Days and The Sixth Sense, where the main character spends quality time with their drug of choice, gazing at old film of their wife/girlfriend/kid/gerbil/houseplant/small pile of gravel and weeping openly at cruel fate which snatched them away.

Usually there is bad music, too.

This is what happens when you let yourself be filmed by an amateur videographer. You end up being all out of focus and zoomed-in-on for no reason, just waiting for someone to make a moving montage out of you, so your grieving loved one can drink themselves into a stupor watching you babble away like an idiot on the screen. Maybe they'd even uh--

*SNAP!*

Also, somehow, someway, today is my third wedding anniversary.

Thank you for putting up with me, wifely friend. Your karmic rewards will one day be rich.

A word of advice

If you see an old lady standing on the same streetcorner every day, and nobody seems to see her but you, and she has kind of wild spooky hair, and sometimes almost seems to be floating a couple of inches off the ground, under no circumstances should you hire a medium, a team of parapsychologists and indulge in a little Kirlian photography to document this, the first provable evidence of life ater death. It's very embarrassing when it turns out she's just some lady waiting at the bus stop.

OK, Canada. Sure, you're smarter than us. And generally a lot nicer than us. And probably more hygeinic.

But do you have to have everything? Even the Rock-Paper-Scissors Championship of the World?

It is a dark day for America.

Incidentally, isn't the game called Rochambeau? I prefer to call it that because it makes me feel important to use such high-faluting language, but you are free to use whatever appelation pleases you.

Every Day Is a Little Song

Arvo Part
John Cale
We're out of
Tomatoes

That was the chant in my head this morning. Every morning, my wife wakes me up, since she is far more reponsible and diligent about the little things like being awake than I am, and I stagger out to the kitchen. We have breakfast while listening to NPR, dutifully rolling our eyes or expressing deep-seeded moral outrage when the President or Arnold Schwarzenegger is mentioned. Interaction is somewhat minimal, as we are slowly coming to consciousness. One of the daily tasks apportioned to me is the pressing down of the French press coffeepot. This, for some reason, seems to require Herculean strength and the patience of Job. You must exert tremendous force on the plunger, which will crawl downwards at the rate of a tree sloth who's not got anything on his schedule that day, until it reaches ground zero and your somewhat cloudy cup o joe is ready.

I should mention that the reason we have to use the French press is that I broke the Krups machine's carafe when I tried to do something silly like washing it, and we have yet to get a replacement. This was over six months ago. It used to be that you could go to Macy's and buy a replacement carafe. Indeed, when I was a humble coffee-slinger, we sold the carafes in the café, and got a lot of business from the clumsy faction of society. Now, you have to order the replacement carafe online or get Macy's to order one for you.

Do you care about this? You should, because it starts with the carafes, man, and ends up with outpatients not being able to get their insulin. Macy's is killing diabetics is what I'm saying.

Sorry. that was a little off-subject.

The chant thing is what I'm really talking about here. Every morning I get these little thoughts, like this morning when I thought how nice it would be to take an Arvo Part CD to work, so I could get all minimalist while I write the company newsletter. The problem is that I forget these little ideas with astonishing regularity, so to remember, I have to chant the words just under the current of conscious thought. So I was droning "Ar-vo Part", "Ar-vo Part" like some crazy symphony cheerleader or something who won't shut up during the quiet bits of "Tabula Rasa" and feels it necessary to lend encouragement to the first violin.

I got a little distracted with the internal chanting when some pedantic portion of my mind wanted me to add the umlaut or dieresis thing over the "a", hence Arvo Pärt, and pronounce it correctly, like PAIRT. The first portion of my mind argued that pronouncing it "Part" was better for the cheer-chant rhythm. The umlaut camp responded with accusations of xenophobia and insinuations that perhaps I just wasn't smart enough to use more complicated punctuation. In the end, no decision was reached, and since the chanting was only internal anyway, both parties were satisfied by adding the dots and leaving it up to my discretion whether to pronounce them.

Then, out of nowhere, I suddenly felt a deep desire to hear John Cale's "Fragments of a Rainy Season". I don't know why. Maybe it was a particularly Welsh quality to the sesame bagel and cream cheese this particular morning. But now I had to add two more syllables to the little song in my head:

"Arvo Pärt John Cale/Arvo Pärt John Cale/Arvo Pärt John Cale"

I had a little cadence going now. I imagined legions of sweaty masses like you see in Biblical epic films and gladiator movies banging immense kettle drums and chanting it in a voice one thousand strong.

This image stuck with me throughout my morning shower, shave and gel-action, until I wandered to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the wife's and my lunches. I folded little slices of meat and slathered healthful mayonnaise to the strains of the mighty chant. And then, a sudden blow! A rabbit punch from out of nowhere: We were out of tomatoes! "I have to remember to buy tomatoes at the store today", I thought, "or surely the Earth will be consumed by fire."

Arvo Pärt!
John Cale!
We're out of!
tomatoes!
Arvo Pärt!
JohnCale!
We're out of!
tomatoes!

This was getting complicated. And I hadn't even put my socks on yet. I completed my pre-work duties, including chasing the cat around the house, and made it to the car. Then it struck me that I had left Arvo and John inside in the CD cabinet. What the hell good was my stadium full of drum-players doing if I didn't even remember what I was supposed to do? Pondering the unknowable workings of the brain, I ran back in to get the CDs. I have a little CD carrier that holds maybe 30 CDs, which I take to work every day. I always chastise myself for not changing the selection in there enough. I seem to end up with the same little core of work-music again and again.

Anyway, I manage to select a couple of CDs to replace with Arvo and John and I 'm ready to go.

Theoretically, I should now be able to remove the "Ar-vo-Pärt-John-Cale" portion of the chant, but I can't! I'll forget the tomatoes if I do. The rhythm will be lost! The center cannot hold! So now I'm stuck with the full chant until the tomato objective is achieved.

As I pull out of the garage, The Clash's Sandinista starts up in the stereo. The first song is The Magnificent Seven. Soon I am singing my little chant to the tune of The Magnificent Seven. But I am too easily distracted. I have overdone the coffee this morning and my mind leaps from one tangent to the next:

Magnificent Seven...Seven Samurai...Yul Brynner...Westworld robots...no! You've got to remember the tomatoes!....Samurai...Kurosawa...Yul Brynner...The Toy Dolls...I should have grabbed the Toy Dolls CD...The tomatoes! Don't forget!.....Nellie the Elephant...

When I arrive at work, the chant becomes too multi-faceted, with syncopated rhythms dealing with every little thing I wanted to remember from my morning drive to work. Now along with the legions of drum players, there is a children's choir singing the more fluid notes, holding the notes for long periods of time and clutching candles in their hands like some terrible Night Ranger video. The camera zooms and pans. Colors flash, and the words appear on the bottom of the screen like a karaoke machine.

The chant drones in my head all day, keeping me company as the hours drag past, until finally on the way home I make it to the store.



I forgot the tomatoes.

Here are a couple of completely unrelated links for your potential enjoyment:

Video game toilets!
Scroll down past the russian gibberish for some truly beautiful video commodes.
[courtesy of the Wife]

World Beard Championships
Why not encourage mites? Think of it as topiary for your face. Kind of like in The Shining with those crazy hedge animals. Except here you'd have Beard Animals! Imagine the terror as you are stalked by your own whiskers, which you yourself have lovingly shaped into the form of a double-helix, thus investing them with the very spark of life itself!
[courtesy of my good friend Mr. Bungee Benji]

I don't get it, man.

You say to one person "Be my queen and together we rule the Earth for a thousand years!"

And they get all freaked out. Even without the diabolical laughter. I mean, come on. That's a common enough thing to say to the checkout guy at the grocery store, right?

Also, don't call your boss "Ultraman" all day for no good reason. It turns out it's kind of upsetting.

It probably didn't help when he got all mad and I said "Why don't you get your beta capsule out and kick my ass, Ultraman? Come on, Ultraman! Do it! You scared, Ultraman?"

So we just had our quarterly meeting at Purgatory, Inc., and it was announced that we will once again not be receiving incentive payouts.

However, I have developed my own way to make a little side dough. My hopeless lackeys are only here 8 or 9 hours a day max. For the other 15 hours a day, there's no reason that space can't be put to good use. I envision miniature Japanese Coffin-Hotels in each cubicle. For the small price of maybe $35.99 a night, weary travelers could have a little home away from home for the night. True, the cubes aren't that big, but what do you want for $35.99? I think we could probably fit ten, twelve guests in one cubicle.

I mean, we've got computer access, we're centrally located right next to the airport and all the office supplies they can carry on the way out in the morning. And if they play their cards right, they can raid the employee fridge for whatever marginally viable foodstuffs the office drones have left in there.

Hell, if they hung around until work hours, they could probably fool HR into thinking they work here and supplement their income a little.

Kids Play Classic Games

Too hilarious. A bunch of kids are given PONG, Mattel Hand-held Football, etc.

Brian: What's this supposed to be?

EGM: Football. It's one of the first great portable games.

Brian: I thought it was Run Away From the Dots.

John: I don't see how this has anything remotely to do with football.

EGM: Which team are you playing?

Kirk: The red lines.

Tim: They could've just as easily called this game anything—Baseball, Bowling, Escape From the Monsters.

EGM: Did you score?

Kirk: I bumped into a dot.

OK! OK!

I'm sorry. I didn't know the Spoonman was a real guy. Here is his site.

There must be some rabid Spoonman anti-defamation league out there, just waiting for some yutz to make a crack about the Spoonman. To be fair, I only received a couple of emails about the Spoonman. It is great to say, isn't it? Spooonman. It's even better with the extra "o". But the Spoonman ain't havin' that. He's fighting against the man. With his spoons.

For penance, I will use only spoons to eat for the rest of my life. Except at Chinese restaurants, because I feel it's important to participate in the culture with the chop sticks, you know?

I still think it's a goofy song though.

I suddenly remembered yesterday that there was a song a few years ago called Spoonman. I don't remember much else about it, just that it was a song called Spoonman.

I remember just a little of it. The part that goes "Spoooooonmayyy-un! Come together with your hands!"

Now I can't stop laughing.

Maybe that's not how it goes. I think it was one of those Pearl Jam type bands with the singer that sounds kind of like Neil Young and kind of like Scooby Doo on a bender.

But, for me, it's enough to know that someone, somewhere, wrote a song about a Spoonman.

We watch the teevee.

We can't stop. Once, we were the proud, steely-eyed death-machines who would purr "Oh? You own a television?"

We watch World Poker Tour. We watch Fear Factor.

We know and hate certain commercials. We grade them for relevance and staying power. We puzzle at the insane volume of our local Mercedes-Benz dealership ads. We wish death upon Radio Shack spokespeople. We know what a Swiffer is.

We watch 24. We watch The Amazing Race.

We scan History, Discovery, PBS for documentaries on mummies or Mayans. We are upset that King Tut was denied the title of #1 Mummy.

We watch Trading Spaces. We watch Monster House.

We wonder at Paige Davis' physique and potentially drug-induced perkiness. We cringe at the sight of Doug the Designer, knowing his visage portends yet another family room that dimly resembles a gay bar circa 1983.

We watch What Not to Wear. We watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

We call people "bitchy" when they complain about their makeover. We prefer the BBC America version, where the hosts grab any and all available boobs. We trust the style coaches, and wonder about shaving with the grain.

We watch baseball. We watch Monday Night Football.

We plan our evenings around primetime sports. We puzzle over the cheerleaders and why they are there. We embrace commercial breaks to run to the fridge for another beer. We demand instant replays, telestrators, ridiculous graphics and Mascot Races. We point out the rally caps in the crowd, and the alarming trend to catch the cotton candy vendor on screen. We comment on trends in athlete facial hair.

We, at long last, are a demographic.

Something must be done.