The intertubes have done many wonderful things for us. They've given us Mahir, lolcats, and lots of lovely, beautiful women. They've piped works of musical genius into our homes and offices and allowed us to shop for pretty much anything we like whenever we want.
But perhaps the most endearing aspect of the hyper-democratisation of the now-technified masses is the way in which the interwebs have given voice to those who previously had none. Sullen, semi-educated malcontents across the globe now have more outlets for their partially formed opinions than they can possibly address in one long, slow afternoon of unemployment. And it all comes wrapped up in some of the most elegant prose ever to grace either paper or pixel.
Take for example these nuggets of excellence from YouTube, which now serves as the primary opened spigot for butchered rants and hateful abuse hurled by anonymous cranks at faceless others from behind the comfort of a Windows firewall. It's all just a bit too easy for anyone at all to inflict themselves on YouTube, and the end result is the most dumbed down version of toilet wall taunts available to the species. At least with the toilet wall you were limited to a few brief lines; YouTube lets you write and write and write.
In this instance the topic of conversation is Gatchaman, which probably requires some explanation, but it's a nerdy path we're not going to walk down right now. Maybe I'll get into that some other time. For now keep your focus on the voice of the masses, not on the nerdiness of Gatchaman.
dude stop kissin ramosnef ass its not about us bein rude its about u not lookin at the show for what it is a good show its to many people in the world they always put dumb ways of thinkin in the mix its always got to be about race of she or he is fat or the sex of the person thats dumb its just people need to carin about dumb shit like that this world wil die out people carin so must about money looks race
Where do we start with this little literary marvel? Is it the total lack of punctuation that lets the writer's inner voice shine so brightly? Perhaps it's the complete neglect afforded the letter G at the end of any verb operating in the continuous tense. Best of all I like the obligatory newspeak substitution of "u" for "you". When you do that everyone knows you're hip. I'm mean ur hip.
i forgot to put stop in between to - carin in the last comment sorry but im not mad at u its just why care about that theres a big guy in g-force hell when power rangers came out did u know alot of black people was mad became the black ranger was a black guy that was dumb of them to think like that its was just a tv show people hid to make its about race
I was really, really tempted to shift the case of the block of text to upper case in order to lend it more oomph, you know? Anything in upper case is by definition more readable and packs more oomph.
What I like here is that our writer is attempting to make some kind of racial/social commentary vis-a-vis the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. For my liking the Power Rangers was just a stupid kids' show about stupid kids making stupid hand gestures while wearing stupid coloured tights in a stupid big robot. That's stupid stuff. But our comment poster has gone spelunking in the cultural depths of the Power Rangers and surfaced with a trophy. If he's so sharp when it comes to the Power Rangers imagine the social analogs he'd draw with the Ferengi and Romulans from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Our friend isn't done yet either. All the lack of capitalisation and talk of racial issues has gone and punched his buttons enough to get him to shift his razor-sharp intellect to the topic of obesity and weight issues. My personal favourite is the bit about the jumping jacks.
and dude just because a persons slim dont make them better i know alot of slim people who are very weak cant even do 100 jumpin jack how sad and the bad thing about it know some bigger people who can do 200 jumpin jack size means nothin its heart gatchman 5 got heart hes the best one like in voltron the yellow loin is a big guy he can take care of his self i like this cartoon because they show all people can do the job no matter of u slim fat a girl old or young its ass kickin time
Creeping into his screed is a version of the old "believe in yourself and you can do anything" maxim that Hollywood is so fond of milking, but the whole "Voltron's yellow loin" thing has me miffed. Since he's described as being a "big guy" does that mean his loin is ample and yellow? Perhaps he's jaundiced. Then he caps it all off with a spin on the "we're all awesome and capable in our own special way" cliche that gets wheeled out for an airing on just about any given Saturday morning cartoon. Exactly what he's getting at with "girl old" has me at a loss. It seems like an oxymoron but I'm almost certainly missing something, just like I'm confused about how anyone can be "slim fat". Maybe that's similar to when people say "bad" when they really mean "good". "Hey man ur lookin totally slim fat today." It's got a ring to it. At any rate I couldn't really care less 'cause it's ass kickin time and that's all I need to know.
The weird thing is that there's actually a kind of consistency to the spelling and grammar that's being employed. The rule states that if you're going to get it wrong, at least get it wrong consistently. Anything in the continuous tense gets no terminating G, caps are irrelevant and most words—we'll discount his "you" substitutions—are spelled surprisingly correctly. What blows my mind the most is that he's comfortable passing off this type of writing as legitimate communication. Somewhere since the advent of the Mosaic browser in 1993 and the introduction of txt msgs, the standards of acceptable written communication have dropped to the point where a 31 year old can wantonly jettison a few hundred years worth of established convention for the sake of expediency. From what I've seen and been told, this phenomenon is hardly unique to YouTube. Check just about any online forum. Moreover around 50% of the emails you receive from professional adults—we'll leave the current crop of teenagers out of this for now; that's a whole separate bag—almost certainly exhibit some of these traits. Commas? Fuck 'em. Full stops? Never needed them. Colons and semi-colons? Let's drop the anal fixation.
The more I think about it the more I'm inclined to give the man a medal for his interpretive use of the English language. He's riding a tide here. Through what amounts to abject laziness, he's found a way to subvert written English into an almost entirely new form, specially tailored to meet the needs of the write-now, press-submit, think-later demands of personal exchanges over da web. George Orwell would be proud.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Cat Wars Part 3
Fucko the Clown is back from a day trip to the pet hospital to have three teeth yanked out of his skull. Put in the context of the recent cat wars, how does that affect the cat versus cat power equation? It's generally positive. A day after Fucko the Clown—also known as El Pinche Payaso—returned from the pet hospital, the arbiters of the house have declared a cat wars armistice. Despite a few flat ears and hissy-breath from Chumbles upon Fucko's immediate return, the ensuing 24 hours or so have allowed each feline to decide that the tiny apartment is no Kashmir, and that the other cat is neither Pakistan nor India—you take your pick which.
Let's not overlook the fact that Fucko the Clown is getting a twice a day hit of some kind of pain reliever that's officially a controlled substance. Yes, when I fronted up at the pharmacy counter at the pet hospital I was confronted with a conversation that went something like this.
"And I'm going to give you these pre-measured pain killers for him. Do we have a copy of your driver's licence on file?"
"I don't think so. Why do you need that?" This is a pet hospital. What do they need with my DMV credentials?
"The pain killers are actually a controlled substance and we're required by law to precisely track who gets it."
Bizarre, huh? But when the stuff ends in "orphine" it's probably the source of a much better high than the shitty heroin sold on the corner of 24th and Folsom. Or at least that's what I'm guessing.
With the cat wars officially over I'm going to roll the dice of sleep and do my utmost to sleep as much of the night through as I can without being rudely interrupted at 4am by a blob of fur stomping across my chest, or by an ear-splitting cat screech baying for the feline on the other side of the bedroom door. May the force be with me.
Let's not overlook the fact that Fucko the Clown is getting a twice a day hit of some kind of pain reliever that's officially a controlled substance. Yes, when I fronted up at the pharmacy counter at the pet hospital I was confronted with a conversation that went something like this.
"And I'm going to give you these pre-measured pain killers for him. Do we have a copy of your driver's licence on file?"
"I don't think so. Why do you need that?" This is a pet hospital. What do they need with my DMV credentials?
"The pain killers are actually a controlled substance and we're required by law to precisely track who gets it."
Bizarre, huh? But when the stuff ends in "orphine" it's probably the source of a much better high than the shitty heroin sold on the corner of 24th and Folsom. Or at least that's what I'm guessing.
With the cat wars officially over I'm going to roll the dice of sleep and do my utmost to sleep as much of the night through as I can without being rudely interrupted at 4am by a blob of fur stomping across my chest, or by an ear-splitting cat screech baying for the feline on the other side of the bedroom door. May the force be with me.
Monday, June 25, 2007
What Could Be vs What Is
Gay Pride, Dykes on Bikes, lazy beers at Zeitgeist on a sunny afternoon—I skipped the lot. The weekend is always marked at the beginning by the list of things one wants to do and ultimately modulated at the end by the list of things one wound up doing. The differential is often enough to draw a tear.
Check the past weekend...
What I Wanted to Do
group of four presumptively Italian tourists decided to make their presence felt in the crowd. One was a sweat pants-wearing dood of around 19 years of age who'd forgone the bongs in favour of a lot of liquor. He made for a restless drunk, and after a painful twenty or so minutes of interruptions he vacated for the restrooms, perhaps to evacuate his belly. His two companions of about equal age and their older "chaperon" remained. Time wore on and when he didn't return the venue staff played a short game of Hunt the Drunk. It was over quickly. After discovering a slumped body in the men's restroom the erstwhile chaperon was called upon to cart the incapacitated body out of the venue. The chaperon didn't exactly rate highly on the responsibility scale. Good looks, curly locks and a gives-the-girls-a-moisty Italian accent can't substitute for a dose of resolute action, but to his misplaced credit the chaperon tried. After dumping the drunken teenager out on the sidewalk with all the other bums who inhabit the 16th and Capp crack zone, the Italian Stallion attempted to smooth-talk his way back inside. He had the misfortune of attempting to charm The Great Organiser. Her shields were up.
"You can let me back in, of course. You are an American woman, yes?"
His tone implied that there was some kind of difference between them, him being Italian and all, that would allow him to grease his tongue with a slick layer of persuasive misogyny that his experience in female conquest had told him no American woman could resist.
"Yes, and you're an asshole. You need to leave."
The Great Organiser, when confronted with a situation that demands corrective action, can be ferocious. Without further remonstrations the Stallion was unceremoniously manhandled out of the venue by a burly female member of the staff while another one got to work on calling the police dispatch.
The rest of the performance concluded without incident.
Check the past weekend...
What I Wanted to Do
- Get a few beers at Zeitgeist on a sunny afternoon, either Saturday or Sunday; I'm not fussy.
- Head downtown and do some shopping
- Check out some of the Pride festivities
- Play plenty of Oblivion
- Catch a movie
- Wash my car
- Separated the cats from one another and gradually reintroduced them, many times over
- Went to Trader Joe's and bought food for the week
- Rented a wet vacuum and cleaned the couch and arm chairs
- Played a modest amount of Oblivion
- Stripped those wretched doors of more paint
- Lamented the differential between the list of things I wanted to do and what was now looking realistic as of Sunday afternoon
group of four presumptively Italian tourists decided to make their presence felt in the crowd. One was a sweat pants-wearing dood of around 19 years of age who'd forgone the bongs in favour of a lot of liquor. He made for a restless drunk, and after a painful twenty or so minutes of interruptions he vacated for the restrooms, perhaps to evacuate his belly. His two companions of about equal age and their older "chaperon" remained. Time wore on and when he didn't return the venue staff played a short game of Hunt the Drunk. It was over quickly. After discovering a slumped body in the men's restroom the erstwhile chaperon was called upon to cart the incapacitated body out of the venue. The chaperon didn't exactly rate highly on the responsibility scale. Good looks, curly locks and a gives-the-girls-a-moisty Italian accent can't substitute for a dose of resolute action, but to his misplaced credit the chaperon tried. After dumping the drunken teenager out on the sidewalk with all the other bums who inhabit the 16th and Capp crack zone, the Italian Stallion attempted to smooth-talk his way back inside. He had the misfortune of attempting to charm The Great Organiser. Her shields were up."You can let me back in, of course. You are an American woman, yes?"
His tone implied that there was some kind of difference between them, him being Italian and all, that would allow him to grease his tongue with a slick layer of persuasive misogyny that his experience in female conquest had told him no American woman could resist.
"Yes, and you're an asshole. You need to leave."
The Great Organiser, when confronted with a situation that demands corrective action, can be ferocious. Without further remonstrations the Stallion was unceremoniously manhandled out of the venue by a burly female member of the staff while another one got to work on calling the police dispatch.
The rest of the performance concluded without incident.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Cat Wars Part 2
The battle rages. Five days after the brown bag incident, Chumbles and Fucko the Clown can still barely stand to share the same air. Fucko the Clown remains sequestered in the bedroom, bawling his lungs out, while Chumbles has taken up post out in the living area of the apartment. Any brief incursions into their makeshift DMZ (otherwise called the hallway), be they intentional or mistaken, are met with bushy tails, tense feline muscles and a lot of prickling back hair, not to mention the growling and hissing.
The Great Organiser has put in considerable hours of research into their behaviour. The internet, ever the source of unbiased opinion, has identified the cats' problem as fear-induced aggression. We're following the prescription. Keeping the cats separated and hopped up on a cocktail of soothing pheromones has done a lot to mollify their temperament, but when one acts in a sudden manner during their scheduled re-socialising sessions it's as if somebody just announced that missile silos had been discovered in Cuba.
The soundtrack for all of this: The Offspring's Come Out and Play. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a horrible song—Chumbawamba's Tubthumping rates up there with it as two of the most annoying pop songs of the past 30 years—but when "you've gotta keep them separated" what else is likely to run through your head? It's almost annoying as the cats themselves.
The Great Organiser has put in considerable hours of research into their behaviour. The internet, ever the source of unbiased opinion, has identified the cats' problem as fear-induced aggression. We're following the prescription. Keeping the cats separated and hopped up on a cocktail of soothing pheromones has done a lot to mollify their temperament, but when one acts in a sudden manner during their scheduled re-socialising sessions it's as if somebody just announced that missile silos had been discovered in Cuba.
The soundtrack for all of this: The Offspring's Come Out and Play. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a horrible song—Chumbawamba's Tubthumping rates up there with it as two of the most annoying pop songs of the past 30 years—but when "you've gotta keep them separated" what else is likely to run through your head? It's almost annoying as the cats themselves.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
A Poet Who Didn't Know It
This dates back a number of years to when I lived in Santa Clara (don't get me started). Whitey and I were sipping coffee at a café in downtown San Jose. Whitey, a smoker, was sucking on a Camel Light. We were minding our own business when a dishevelled and evidently homeless woman walked up to our street side table. Without any prompting or warning she stared directly at Whitey and proceeded to state the following...
I'm Tiger Woods' golf instructor.
I'm Hollywood in San Jose.
You smoke lights,
I smoke crack,
Up in smoke,
Like Cheech and Chong,
Straight from the dumpster.
Once spoken she ambled away down the street. Whitey and I looked at each other in amazement. I hastily wrote down her words and made a point of memorising them.
Sometimes genius lurks where you least expect it.
I'm Tiger Woods' golf instructor.
I'm Hollywood in San Jose.
You smoke lights,
I smoke crack,
Up in smoke,
Like Cheech and Chong,
Straight from the dumpster.
Once spoken she ambled away down the street. Whitey and I looked at each other in amazement. I hastily wrote down her words and made a point of memorising them.
Sometimes genius lurks where you least expect it.
Cat Wars
When the two cats that inhabit my house finally die I'll probably wonder how I ever managed to put up with the torment.
My apartment is small—barely 700 square feet. Crammed inside that confined space are four living, breathing, farting, shitting lifeforms: The Great Organizer, myself and two cats. With all that close contact and exchange of matter between us—dander, skin flakes, bodily gases—you'd better hope we get along. Guess what? We don't. Well, two of us generally do—The Great Organiser and I are known to create some noise on occasion but we're still officially "lovers"—but the other two are a different story right now.
Those two are the cats, and for now we'll label them Fucko the Clown, the graceless larger of the two and sometimes the surliest, and Chumbles, the runt of the litter with an attitude completely out of whack with her compact size.
On Sunday afternoon I returned from a round of clothes shopping, bag in hand. The Great Organiser was sitting on the couch while I displayed my recent purchases for her. Nothing I bought managed to illicit too much of a response from her either in the negative or the positive. What did get a response out of her was the way in which the cats reacted to the bag. Made of brown paper, the bag was a little larger than the kind of bag you'd find at a grocery store. The handles were made of loops of twisted brown paper, lending them sufficient strength to support the spoils of a significant outlay of cash at the store.
"Check this out," called The Great Organiser while I was down the hallway putting the clothes in the closet. I shuffled my way back towards the entrance to our small dwelling.
Anyone with a cat can tell you that while it's possible to throw down no small chunk of change for cat toys, by far the cheapest and most enjoyable playthings for felines are boxes and bags. When anything arrives at the doorstep from Amazon, pluck the product free of its shipping container and leave the box open for the cats. It's as if the next four generations of video game consoles had been released at once and delivered directly to the pets. The amusement is seemingly endless.
The Great Organiser was motioning towards the formerly empty bag, situated close to the front door and lying on its side. The contents were no longer new clothes; it now contained Chumbles having the time of her life. Fucko the Clown hates to be left out of any fun that's being had by any other living being in the apartment, so he crept up on the bag, invisible to Chumbles, who had by now buried herself deep inside.
"That's pretty funny," remarked The Great Organiser and I had to agree. For whatever reason it always amuses me to see the cats get a kick out of something as mundane and ordinary as a box or a brown paper bag. Fucko the Clown was by now upon the bag, Chumbles inside.
With Fucko the Clown perched on top of the bag, pressing down on the trapped cat inside, Chumbles contorted herself in an effort to escape. She didn't get far. In her efforts to extricate herself from the enclosure she managed to ensnare herself in one of the bag's loops, effectively hooking the bag around her torso.
That's when the panic struck.
What had moments ago been a playful cat on mission of exploration into a brown paper cave turned into a writhing, screaming tempest of fur, claws and paper. I was dumbstruck.
"Get over here and help!"
The Great Organizer reacts much better to stressful situations than I do. She'd already leaped into action, lunging towards the blur of fur and paper that was spinning in front of her like the Tasmanian Devil from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. I couldn't do much but stand there and watch.
Before The Great Organiser could get a firm grip on her, Chumbles' violent thrashings had ripped the handle free of its attachment to the bag. The stress of her entrapment had caused her to lose control of her bladder, and with a spray of cat urine Chumbles darted off towards the opposite end of the apartment, paper bag loop still encircling her midriff.
At the time it all seemed hilarious, and even now it cracks me up to recall the image of Chumbles, completely engulfed in panic while she attempts to free herself of the bag. But it doesn't end there. After Chumbles had recovered and emerged from her hiding place, the loop now gone, it became apparent that Fucko the Clown had completely changed his disposition towards her. Whereas minutes earlier they'd been able to get along just fine, now he was growling at her and stalking her, treating her like an interloper in her own home.
That was on Sunday. It's now Wednesday and the animosity between the two felines has barely subsided. Suspecting the liberal showering of panicked cat urine around the living area as the culprit, The Great Organiser and I have removed the couch seats and bought an enzyme cleaner to rid the scent. Pheromones designed to assuage the anxieties of stressed cats have been sprinkled around to minimum effect and the two have also been separated. It's like reintroducing them to each other for a second time. Moreover they won't stop howling at one another, regardless of the hour. We're now three days into this routine, all because of a brown paper bag. They're at each other all the time. Sleep has become a relative concept and rude awakenings at three, four or five AM on account of hissing and growling are now par for the course. I'd do strange, strange things to remove the cats from my life and get a full eight hours of uninterrupted rest. Strange things. This morning, at around 4:35, I pondered a future in which both cats died a horrible and vicious death, and no pets were around to bug me for food or stomp on my head while I slept or howl at full volume at that other cat on the the other side of the door. It's a distant future, I know, but right now, with my eyes drooping from lack of rest, I'm clinging to that vision dearly.
My apartment is small—barely 700 square feet. Crammed inside that confined space are four living, breathing, farting, shitting lifeforms: The Great Organizer, myself and two cats. With all that close contact and exchange of matter between us—dander, skin flakes, bodily gases—you'd better hope we get along. Guess what? We don't. Well, two of us generally do—The Great Organiser and I are known to create some noise on occasion but we're still officially "lovers"—but the other two are a different story right now.
Those two are the cats, and for now we'll label them Fucko the Clown, the graceless larger of the two and sometimes the surliest, and Chumbles, the runt of the litter with an attitude completely out of whack with her compact size.
On Sunday afternoon I returned from a round of clothes shopping, bag in hand. The Great Organiser was sitting on the couch while I displayed my recent purchases for her. Nothing I bought managed to illicit too much of a response from her either in the negative or the positive. What did get a response out of her was the way in which the cats reacted to the bag. Made of brown paper, the bag was a little larger than the kind of bag you'd find at a grocery store. The handles were made of loops of twisted brown paper, lending them sufficient strength to support the spoils of a significant outlay of cash at the store.
"Check this out," called The Great Organiser while I was down the hallway putting the clothes in the closet. I shuffled my way back towards the entrance to our small dwelling.
Anyone with a cat can tell you that while it's possible to throw down no small chunk of change for cat toys, by far the cheapest and most enjoyable playthings for felines are boxes and bags. When anything arrives at the doorstep from Amazon, pluck the product free of its shipping container and leave the box open for the cats. It's as if the next four generations of video game consoles had been released at once and delivered directly to the pets. The amusement is seemingly endless.
The Great Organiser was motioning towards the formerly empty bag, situated close to the front door and lying on its side. The contents were no longer new clothes; it now contained Chumbles having the time of her life. Fucko the Clown hates to be left out of any fun that's being had by any other living being in the apartment, so he crept up on the bag, invisible to Chumbles, who had by now buried herself deep inside.
"That's pretty funny," remarked The Great Organiser and I had to agree. For whatever reason it always amuses me to see the cats get a kick out of something as mundane and ordinary as a box or a brown paper bag. Fucko the Clown was by now upon the bag, Chumbles inside.
With Fucko the Clown perched on top of the bag, pressing down on the trapped cat inside, Chumbles contorted herself in an effort to escape. She didn't get far. In her efforts to extricate herself from the enclosure she managed to ensnare herself in one of the bag's loops, effectively hooking the bag around her torso.
That's when the panic struck.
What had moments ago been a playful cat on mission of exploration into a brown paper cave turned into a writhing, screaming tempest of fur, claws and paper. I was dumbstruck.
"Get over here and help!"
The Great Organizer reacts much better to stressful situations than I do. She'd already leaped into action, lunging towards the blur of fur and paper that was spinning in front of her like the Tasmanian Devil from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. I couldn't do much but stand there and watch.
Before The Great Organiser could get a firm grip on her, Chumbles' violent thrashings had ripped the handle free of its attachment to the bag. The stress of her entrapment had caused her to lose control of her bladder, and with a spray of cat urine Chumbles darted off towards the opposite end of the apartment, paper bag loop still encircling her midriff.
At the time it all seemed hilarious, and even now it cracks me up to recall the image of Chumbles, completely engulfed in panic while she attempts to free herself of the bag. But it doesn't end there. After Chumbles had recovered and emerged from her hiding place, the loop now gone, it became apparent that Fucko the Clown had completely changed his disposition towards her. Whereas minutes earlier they'd been able to get along just fine, now he was growling at her and stalking her, treating her like an interloper in her own home.
That was on Sunday. It's now Wednesday and the animosity between the two felines has barely subsided. Suspecting the liberal showering of panicked cat urine around the living area as the culprit, The Great Organiser and I have removed the couch seats and bought an enzyme cleaner to rid the scent. Pheromones designed to assuage the anxieties of stressed cats have been sprinkled around to minimum effect and the two have also been separated. It's like reintroducing them to each other for a second time. Moreover they won't stop howling at one another, regardless of the hour. We're now three days into this routine, all because of a brown paper bag. They're at each other all the time. Sleep has become a relative concept and rude awakenings at three, four or five AM on account of hissing and growling are now par for the course. I'd do strange, strange things to remove the cats from my life and get a full eight hours of uninterrupted rest. Strange things. This morning, at around 4:35, I pondered a future in which both cats died a horrible and vicious death, and no pets were around to bug me for food or stomp on my head while I slept or howl at full volume at that other cat on the the other side of the door. It's a distant future, I know, but right now, with my eyes drooping from lack of rest, I'm clinging to that vision dearly.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
A Dirty Little Secret
No more long, protracted posts—it's time to shift gear and post something a little quicker and easier to digest.
I'm a gamer, meaning one of my main forms of relaxation involves mucking around on my computer playing whatever game has captivated my attention for the past week or so. These days it's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
It's a huge game, and if you're brave enough to install it expect it to consume a massive segment of your precious free time. Social engagements will be broken, study neglected and meals skipped. It's that sort of a game. Today I must have blown about four or five hours or so, which was enough to prompt the Great Organiser to question whether or not my time spent playing has now become a debilitating obsession.
The truth is she might be right.
Oblivion is my dirty little secret that's no longer quite so secret, although it remains just as dirty. Right now I'm at level 26, which is still fairly modest for the game. With a total of around 200 playing hours available I've barely made my way through a third of it. The honestly scary part of it all is that I'm tremendously looking forward to the remaining two thirds.
The more I think about it the more I realise just how the right the Great Organiser is in her assessment.
I'm a gamer, meaning one of my main forms of relaxation involves mucking around on my computer playing whatever game has captivated my attention for the past week or so. These days it's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
It's a huge game, and if you're brave enough to install it expect it to consume a massive segment of your precious free time. Social engagements will be broken, study neglected and meals skipped. It's that sort of a game. Today I must have blown about four or five hours or so, which was enough to prompt the Great Organiser to question whether or not my time spent playing has now become a debilitating obsession.
The truth is she might be right.
Oblivion is my dirty little secret that's no longer quite so secret, although it remains just as dirty. Right now I'm at level 26, which is still fairly modest for the game. With a total of around 200 playing hours available I've barely made my way through a third of it. The honestly scary part of it all is that I'm tremendously looking forward to the remaining two thirds.
The more I think about it the more I realise just how the right the Great Organiser is in her assessment.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Paradise Lost Down the Toilet
WARNING - The following tale is downright gross and disgusting. And it's also absolutely true. You can blame La Cubana Gringa for reminding me of this terrible story and I'm posting it as a sort of response to her Curious Incident of the Poo in the Daytime.
I promise you the scat stories will stop very, very soon. I've just about had enough.
Back in early 2005 I was inThailand Bangkok
I promise you the scat stories will stop very, very soon. I've just about had enough.
Back in early 2005 I was in
The resort was one of those swanky five star joints where everyone is waited on hand-and-foot. Lemongrass makes its way into everything the hotel does, from the scent in the hand towels in the restrooms to the fragrance of the soap—lemongrass everywhere. You can’t escape it.
After a night of putting away strange tropical drinks a few friends and I were nursing hangovers and lazily chewing on pastries from the opulent buffet breakfast at the beach-side restaurant. I’d just poured the first cup of coffee of the day down my guts. I call it the juice loosener for obvious reasons.
“Where’s a good place to take a luxurious dump around here?” I asked my friends.
They all had an opinion and the best recommendation was a relatively isolated restroom just off the path as you make your way from the hotel rooms to the restaurant we were currently stationed. My friends, all true connoisseurs of bowel evacuation, assured me the afore-mentioned restroom offered the best possible shitting experience. They would tell me no more and suggested I experience it first hand.
With the gradually angering turd starting to bash flat-top on my undies—three cups of coffee in rapid succession brings it on quickly—I waddled my way to the highly touted crapper.
My mates weren’t wrong. Walking into the restrooms I was presented with a worthy sight: neatly rolled towels in a basket; perfectly arranged moisturizers arrayed alongside a brightly polished sink accompanied by fragrant white lilies floating in a stainless steel bowl of clear water. Two cylindrical, brushed steel urinals stood proudly on a smooth concrete floor. Tracing a path around the perimeter of the room was what looked like a small crystal clear moat dotted with more floating white lilies. The moat ran in a rectangle around the edge of the room with the two urinals on the short end of the rectangle facing the water's edge and the two stalls situated on both of the rectangle's long sides. Sliding the stall door open I went inside and dropped my strides. Peace at last.
As I commenced my bodily evacuation process I surveyed the placid scene. A perfectly clean, lemongrass-scented toiled seat cradled my cheeks while lily-dotted water trickled lightly in harmony with my piss. It was as if the moat and my body were singing a harmony. Ah, what more could I want?
My moment of tranquil solitude was suddenly smashed by the sound of a boisterous intruder. With motions that implied urgency the intruder rattled on the door of the adjacent stall. Evidently someone else was already in there, enjoying a dump just as peaceful as mine. No luck there. Then came the rattle on my stall's door; his body casting an amorphous shadow over my cubicle's semi-opaque white screen.
“Ooh, fookin’ hell! Fookin’ hell!” he muttered with a tone of frustration, rattling the door once again. Oh great, I thought, he sounds like he's English.
Again he reached for my neighbour’s door, gave it a raucous shake and cried with a hint of pain in his voice “Fook! Fook! Fook!” Yep, he's definitely English and probably much older than me.
The scene then presented to me didn't entirely make sense.
A graying, once ginger-haired man was hovering over the urinal. His pants were down around his ankles and his hand was reaching down towards his nether regions.
Scrubbing my hands down as fast as I could I made my exit, making sure to make absolutely no eye contact with the wanky old man milking his member in my place of peace. It’s fucking gross, but I was out. Free.
As I wandered back to the buffet, I spied the man leaving the restroom only a few seconds after me. Maybe I scared him or broke his concentration, I’m not sure which, but what I then saw made it all clear to me. As the desperate wanker walked off in a divergent direction it became apparent to me what had been going on: a long, distinct streak of his bodily effluent was smeared down the back of his pants. The crotchety coot had crapped himself. He wasn’t jerking his gherkin over the urinal, he was taking a dump. Too many Thai curries had got the better of his GI tract. His panicked sphincter couldn’t contain his curried-up bowels any longer and in a final act of desperation he’d dispersed his poop all over the pristine, lemony urinal.
Thoughts immediately sprang to mind. Should I tell him he’s got shit running down the back of pants? Shall I let him know that when he goes back to the lounge and sits down with his high-class buddies that he’s going to be stamping the velvet with his butt chocolate? Nah, why spoil the fun. More to the point I was too embarrassed for him. I couldn't bring myself to walk up to the man, tap on his shoulder and say, "Hey mate, you've got a dirty big streak of crap on the back of your shorts." It just wouldn't have been right.
Making my way back to the breakfast table I told the tale to my friends. They were enthralled and wanted to witness the scene of the crime. I obliged their interest and showed them the way. Sure enough, there in the urinal was some old codger’s crap. And just to prove how lazy he was, lying there in the middle of the concrete floor was his calling card: an orange-brown nugget of old man feces. I nearly collapsed due to my laughter. A couple of friends shrieked in a combination of disgust and delight.
About thirty minutes later I walked on past the restroom, casting an eye to see what had been done. It was cordoned off and inside a poor hotel worker was tackling the shittiest job going that day: scrubbing up after the loose-arsed limey. I couldn’t have felt more pity.
A Restaurant Disneyland
San Francisco could probably be best described as a restaurant Disneyland. It's a cosy, picturesque city in which many of the residents vacate the city limits for their high-paying jobs in Silicon Valley and return in the evening to compete for precious parking spaces and stuff their faces at any of the thousands of local restaurants. The choice is endless. More so than just about anywhere else in the world, the ratio of eating establishments to the total population in San Francisco seems to be extraordinarily high. It's nearly impossible to walk more than two street blocks without coming across either a taqueria, a burger joint, a pupuseria, a noodle house or a cafe. Moreover most of the places serve food that's more than kind of decent. Much of it is excellent. In need of some spirited debate? Corner a San Francisco resident for a few minutes and start peppering him or her with questions about which taqueria is the best. For added fun take a position on one of them, any one, and hold to it. Your sparring partner will probably dive deep into a lengthy discussion on exactly what type of carne asada constitutes the perfect burrito, and what proportion of beans to rice to salsa produces the perfect wrap. It's an art, a science and a passion. This is the city of good eating.
Burritos and tacos aside, it's not just the lower end of the restaurant scale that gets all the attention in this city; the mid-range restaurants are also of a high standard. Compared with somewhere like New York City, there's probably fewer genuine fine dining restaurants, but that sits well with me. Who but the most obnoxiously rich amongst us can really afford to spend $180 per person on a meal on a routine basis? Where I think New York lacks is in the middle order. The world's best pizza is available in abundance, but when it comes to a finding tasty plate of something-or-other pork loin on a bed of God-knows-what with a who-gives-a-shit reduction, all for about $40 a head (booze extra), San Francisco has the world beaten.
And the good part is that most of these places are right around the corner. Just around the bend from my place on the corner of Mission and Valencia lies Blue Plate. Falling squarely into that mid-range, they dish up American comfort food with a seriously trendy bent. This is Mission fare, so the wait staff are hipster fashion plates and the decoration a showcase for whatever art movement is currently the buzz amongst everyone cooler that you or me, but the service is usually first rate and the food outstanding. I've probably eaten there six or so times and nothing has ever gone awry. Until Tuesday.
Bookings are essential, so the Great Organiser and I had a slot set for 7:45. We were on time, even a little early. Seating was prompt and within a few minutes of our arrival we found ourselves at a table near the back of the restaurant.
This is actually worthy of some further consideration. In Blue Plate terms "back" is a relative concept. The restaurant is in fact a former residence. At some stage in its not too distant past it was a home for either one or many families. As you make your way through the place it's easy to determine exactly which part of the former house is being used for what. In our case we were sitting in what was probably once a rear lounge area or perhaps even a laundry with an entrance to the back yard. And yes, they seat people out there too under those large umbrella-style gas heaters. The back door was wide open for the convenience of the service staff and that's how they got their first ever black mark from me.
As the sun sets in San Francisco the fog comes rolling in, and accompanying the fog there's always a stiff, cool breeze. Often it's more than a breeze and on this night the open back door was funnelling all that wind straight onto our table. The wait staff, usually extraordinarily attentive, remained somehow oblivious to the blast of cold air that was reaching into the tables of their diners. The votive candles resting on the table flickered in protest and we hoped that one would go out, signalling to anyone who cared to look that something was amiss. It never came to that and after an extended period they got wise. It probably could have happened sooner.
I'm a meat eater and I like steak. In my opinion a good steak should have plenty of pink to it. A good show of the pink ensures there's still some flavour left in there, so accordingly I ordered my rib-eye medium rare. The chefs are seasoned pros; if they can't get a steak right then they probably shouldn't be in the kitchen. When the plate arrived—it looked marvellous, a nice cross pattern seared across the face—I took the serrated knife in hand and sliced through the centre. It was overdone. Another black mark.
Setting my disappointment aside I soldiered on with the meal. Even a less than perfect dinner at Blue Plate is far from horrible. With my overdone steak nearly devoured—I have no trouble eating the stuff even when it's not done to my liking—I let my mind wander towards dessert. Taking their American comfort food theme to the sweets department, Blue Plate usually dishes up a number of variants of such things as cobblers and cakes. They're generally delicious and picking only one or two can be tough. This time around we grabbed two. As it turned out the first one we ordered, the one the Great Organiser really wanted to get stuck into, had been hoarded by the large table of business people right behind us. She was not amused. Black mark number three gets chalked on the board. The substitute dessert arrived very quickly indeed, but for some odd reason the minutes kept ticking past before there was any sign of the second. It took some prompting on my behalf to investigate the whereabouts of the second dish. Such lapses are rare for Blue Plate; it's never happened in the past for me but that didn't preclude them being awarded their fourth black mark for the night. Too bad.
So this is all lazy whining on my behalf and it makes for a pretty boring post. The point being here that Blue Plate does a great job and I love their food. I'll be going back there before too long and I expect they'll be back on their game. None of us a perfect after all, but this is a competitive restaurant city, and if you don't win far more than you lose you'll see your patrons heading down the street to that new place that everyone's talking about very, very quickly.
Burritos and tacos aside, it's not just the lower end of the restaurant scale that gets all the attention in this city; the mid-range restaurants are also of a high standard. Compared with somewhere like New York City, there's probably fewer genuine fine dining restaurants, but that sits well with me. Who but the most obnoxiously rich amongst us can really afford to spend $180 per person on a meal on a routine basis? Where I think New York lacks is in the middle order. The world's best pizza is available in abundance, but when it comes to a finding tasty plate of something-or-other pork loin on a bed of God-knows-what with a who-gives-a-shit reduction, all for about $40 a head (booze extra), San Francisco has the world beaten.
And the good part is that most of these places are right around the corner. Just around the bend from my place on the corner of Mission and Valencia lies Blue Plate. Falling squarely into that mid-range, they dish up American comfort food with a seriously trendy bent. This is Mission fare, so the wait staff are hipster fashion plates and the decoration a showcase for whatever art movement is currently the buzz amongst everyone cooler that you or me, but the service is usually first rate and the food outstanding. I've probably eaten there six or so times and nothing has ever gone awry. Until Tuesday.
Bookings are essential, so the Great Organiser and I had a slot set for 7:45. We were on time, even a little early. Seating was prompt and within a few minutes of our arrival we found ourselves at a table near the back of the restaurant.
This is actually worthy of some further consideration. In Blue Plate terms "back" is a relative concept. The restaurant is in fact a former residence. At some stage in its not too distant past it was a home for either one or many families. As you make your way through the place it's easy to determine exactly which part of the former house is being used for what. In our case we were sitting in what was probably once a rear lounge area or perhaps even a laundry with an entrance to the back yard. And yes, they seat people out there too under those large umbrella-style gas heaters. The back door was wide open for the convenience of the service staff and that's how they got their first ever black mark from me.
As the sun sets in San Francisco the fog comes rolling in, and accompanying the fog there's always a stiff, cool breeze. Often it's more than a breeze and on this night the open back door was funnelling all that wind straight onto our table. The wait staff, usually extraordinarily attentive, remained somehow oblivious to the blast of cold air that was reaching into the tables of their diners. The votive candles resting on the table flickered in protest and we hoped that one would go out, signalling to anyone who cared to look that something was amiss. It never came to that and after an extended period they got wise. It probably could have happened sooner.
I'm a meat eater and I like steak. In my opinion a good steak should have plenty of pink to it. A good show of the pink ensures there's still some flavour left in there, so accordingly I ordered my rib-eye medium rare. The chefs are seasoned pros; if they can't get a steak right then they probably shouldn't be in the kitchen. When the plate arrived—it looked marvellous, a nice cross pattern seared across the face—I took the serrated knife in hand and sliced through the centre. It was overdone. Another black mark.
Setting my disappointment aside I soldiered on with the meal. Even a less than perfect dinner at Blue Plate is far from horrible. With my overdone steak nearly devoured—I have no trouble eating the stuff even when it's not done to my liking—I let my mind wander towards dessert. Taking their American comfort food theme to the sweets department, Blue Plate usually dishes up a number of variants of such things as cobblers and cakes. They're generally delicious and picking only one or two can be tough. This time around we grabbed two. As it turned out the first one we ordered, the one the Great Organiser really wanted to get stuck into, had been hoarded by the large table of business people right behind us. She was not amused. Black mark number three gets chalked on the board. The substitute dessert arrived very quickly indeed, but for some odd reason the minutes kept ticking past before there was any sign of the second. It took some prompting on my behalf to investigate the whereabouts of the second dish. Such lapses are rare for Blue Plate; it's never happened in the past for me but that didn't preclude them being awarded their fourth black mark for the night. Too bad.
So this is all lazy whining on my behalf and it makes for a pretty boring post. The point being here that Blue Plate does a great job and I love their food. I'll be going back there before too long and I expect they'll be back on their game. None of us a perfect after all, but this is a competitive restaurant city, and if you don't win far more than you lose you'll see your patrons heading down the street to that new place that everyone's talking about very, very quickly.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Polished Turd Rating Schema
This blog is called The Polished Turd, and not without good reason. There's not much more I'd rather do with my free time other than get out the can of Kiwi Parade Gloss and spit shine a freshly laid body-loaf into a glistening sheen. That's my definition of satisfaction.
But don't be fooled, scatology is a serious science. All living critters must shit so it should come as no surprise to anyone that we as a species have devoted untold hours to analysing the effluent that emanates from our orifices—case in point: The Bristol Stool Chart. Hailing from perhaps the shittiest place on Earth, Britain, the Bristol Stool Chart seeks to categorise each brown stain that makes its way out of our backsides. In my estimation they've done a good job. A quick audit of my recent trips to the can—an exercise in which I usually straight-up disrespect the toilet bowl—reveals I normally hover around a type three, sometimes a four or even a five on a bad day. It depends on how many curries I ate the night before.
Henceforth I'll be using the Bristol Stool Chart to rate my posts. As my devoted readers, I encourage you to use the same system when the time comes for you to pass judgment on my writings.
Was the post kind of loose and lacking substance? Pick number seven.
Was the post fragmented, disjoint and hard to understand? That's a one.
Was it light, a fluff piece with a few rough edges? That one's easy—go for number six.
Perhaps it went down easily; all smooth and slippery—number four all the way.
For the adventurous amongst you try a little mix-and-match. If the post presented a clear-cut argument but ultimately revealed a few surface cracks as the screed progressed feel free to wax lyrical and ascribe it a solid core of type five with a late type three finish. The possibilities are endless.
You get the idea. Visit the link, do your homework and start applying your ratings as you comment. Your friends will be impressed with your newfound scat knowledge.
But don't be fooled, scatology is a serious science. All living critters must shit so it should come as no surprise to anyone that we as a species have devoted untold hours to analysing the effluent that emanates from our orifices—case in point: The Bristol Stool Chart. Hailing from perhaps the shittiest place on Earth, Britain, the Bristol Stool Chart seeks to categorise each brown stain that makes its way out of our backsides. In my estimation they've done a good job. A quick audit of my recent trips to the can—an exercise in which I usually straight-up disrespect the toilet bowl—reveals I normally hover around a type three, sometimes a four or even a five on a bad day. It depends on how many curries I ate the night before.
Henceforth I'll be using the Bristol Stool Chart to rate my posts. As my devoted readers, I encourage you to use the same system when the time comes for you to pass judgment on my writings.
Was the post kind of loose and lacking substance? Pick number seven.
Was the post fragmented, disjoint and hard to understand? That's a one.
Was it light, a fluff piece with a few rough edges? That one's easy—go for number six.
Perhaps it went down easily; all smooth and slippery—number four all the way.
For the adventurous amongst you try a little mix-and-match. If the post presented a clear-cut argument but ultimately revealed a few surface cracks as the screed progressed feel free to wax lyrical and ascribe it a solid core of type five with a late type three finish. The possibilities are endless.
You get the idea. Visit the link, do your homework and start applying your ratings as you comment. Your friends will be impressed with your newfound scat knowledge.
It Ain't Natural
Gyms are really, really weird places—totally bonkers strange. The whole idea of a pile of people showing up in an enclosed place to do what we're genetically and historically supposed to do outside flies in the face of the natural order. But for some odd reason we're compelled by a supreme act of will to trundle along to these places on a routine basis and offload our energy.
That in itself is strange enough. We now live in a society so overstuffed and surrounded by excess that we have to work hard NOT to get fat and bloated. In the relative scheme of things it wasn't really all that long ago that having a surfeit of energy stored in one's body signalled to everyone else in the village that you were a smashing success. A fat, rippling gut meant that you had the wherewithal to get your hands on more of the good stuff than your fellow resource competitors; it meant that you were king of the heap; the best, the smartest, the winner. You got it and they didn't and sporting a plus-sized frame served to advertise your awesomeness to all the losers grovelling at your feet.
Now if you're a fatty you're lazy—prone to too many hours in front of the TV scarfing down the family sized bag of Doritos while an old rerun of Elimidate plays out in front of your glazed-over eyes. Your sloth-like, sedentary behaviour results in an ever-increasing waistband which in turn signals to society at large that you lack the wherewithal to get off your expanding butt and do anything worthwhile with your life. You're a lazy slob and you deserve to be ridiculed for your lack of discipline. Although in a society where nearly everyone is a lazy slob the logic of that position quickly falls apart, but stacked up against our worship of all people thin and pretty and young you can understand the underlying sentiment. Our collective solution: pack a bag full of shorts, tank tops and iPods and beat a hasty path to the incubator of the weird and desperate—go to the gym.
Being kind of weird and desperate, I visit the gym frequently. For reasons still not quite known to me—I'm sure it's somehow Oedipal, but let's not dwell on it—I like to keep myself in decent shape. I'm not musclebound and sporting nary an ounce of fat, but I do my best to keep ravages of time and gravity at bay. We all do, don't we girls? Given a good week I'll get to the gym each weekday and sometimes on the weekend. I'll get in there, break a quick sweat and spread my smelly man-stink all around the machines and the people furiously operating them. And that's the best bit: the people.
As I mentioned, gyms are unholy and unnatural places. Logically they should attract the unholy and the unnatural, like the bleached-blonde woman who must be somewhere in her mid-fifties or so who has clearly spent too much time and money getting her skin stretched and her boobs pumped. She'll strut into the gym, eyes darting left and right in an effort to catch a glimpse of whomever might be mentally undressing her very sloppily thrown together physique. The sad fact is that she thinks she's turning the head of every man in there (and perhaps a few of the women too) and in a way she's right; the only problem is that they're turning their heads away and not towards. What a train wreck.
Then there's Mr. Universe. Some people, they're usually pretty easy to spot, are clearly on the juice. Mr. Universe is clearly on the juice. Around noon each day he's in there, his football-sized biceps and melon-round shoulders working in unison with his protruding chest as he heaves the biggest weights available. The odd thing is that he's only ever in there for about the same duration as I am: an hour. I was puzzled. How could this twenty-something hulk of a man balloon to such a size on such a lean workout regimen? He looks like he could easily front up to a weight lifting competition and win. Easily. It has to be those BALCO vitamin shots.
For about a week I'd been hoping to get a chance to quiz him about his routine—fire a few shots across the bow and see how he reacts; probe the armour for a chink or two. On Monday, after my workout had wrapped up, we were both situated in the same locker area.
"Mind if I ask you a question?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"I see you in here pretty much every day about the same time that I'm in here. You seem to put in about the same amount of time into your workouts as I do but you're clearly in much better shape than I am."
With that remark I thought I could see his left pectoral muscle quiver at the compliment. His right one ticked in sympathy. They were happy.
"Yeah," he said, "I've been doing this a long time. And genetics has a whole lot to do with it."
And anabolic steriods, I thought to myself.
"How long have you been working out?" he asked.
"About four years," I replied. It's the truth.
"I've been at it for about ten, " he informed me without inflecting his words with the kind of smug self-satisfaction I was expecting, "and I'm just the kind of guy who puts on muscle mass easily."
Yeah, and I bet you're the kind of guy who finds steroids pretty easily too, huh? I thought it. I didn't say it.
Humbled in the presence of his mighty musculature, I mumbled out an ill formed response. "Yeah, that genetics stuff is right on. I just don't seem to add muscle very easily. Plus I do mostly cardio at lunch with some weights after work."
"Well," he confidently stated as his deltoids arched up like a couple of open drawbridges, "some people are no-gainers."
I heard it right. He was calling me a "no-gainer". By extension he was throwing himself into the gainer camp with all of his Schwarzenegger wannabe buddies and casting me out with the feebs. So be it. I'm a feeb. I can take it.
"So you only do one session of weights a day?" This was my attempt to call bullshit on him.
"I do some cardio in the morning and then the weights in the middle of the day."
And when do the 'roid shots happen, huh?
The conversation was done. He'd fended me off pretty well and it was clear from his now-dismissive body language—with a frame that big the only language his body knows is a form of yelling—that we were done.
"Well, it looks like you've got a routine that works for you. Well done."
It was over. There were no obvious puncture wounds, no clear signs of chemical enhancement abuse. Within a few minutes my kit bag was packed and I was meandering back out to the main entrance of the gym, ready to return to work. As I walked out I made sure I kept my chin up, my stride long and confident, while I did my utmost to detect out of the corner of my eye who was paying attention to this handsome man as he made his way out.
That in itself is strange enough. We now live in a society so overstuffed and surrounded by excess that we have to work hard NOT to get fat and bloated. In the relative scheme of things it wasn't really all that long ago that having a surfeit of energy stored in one's body signalled to everyone else in the village that you were a smashing success. A fat, rippling gut meant that you had the wherewithal to get your hands on more of the good stuff than your fellow resource competitors; it meant that you were king of the heap; the best, the smartest, the winner. You got it and they didn't and sporting a plus-sized frame served to advertise your awesomeness to all the losers grovelling at your feet.
Now if you're a fatty you're lazy—prone to too many hours in front of the TV scarfing down the family sized bag of Doritos while an old rerun of Elimidate plays out in front of your glazed-over eyes. Your sloth-like, sedentary behaviour results in an ever-increasing waistband which in turn signals to society at large that you lack the wherewithal to get off your expanding butt and do anything worthwhile with your life. You're a lazy slob and you deserve to be ridiculed for your lack of discipline. Although in a society where nearly everyone is a lazy slob the logic of that position quickly falls apart, but stacked up against our worship of all people thin and pretty and young you can understand the underlying sentiment. Our collective solution: pack a bag full of shorts, tank tops and iPods and beat a hasty path to the incubator of the weird and desperate—go to the gym.
Being kind of weird and desperate, I visit the gym frequently. For reasons still not quite known to me—I'm sure it's somehow Oedipal, but let's not dwell on it—I like to keep myself in decent shape. I'm not musclebound and sporting nary an ounce of fat, but I do my best to keep ravages of time and gravity at bay. We all do, don't we girls? Given a good week I'll get to the gym each weekday and sometimes on the weekend. I'll get in there, break a quick sweat and spread my smelly man-stink all around the machines and the people furiously operating them. And that's the best bit: the people.
As I mentioned, gyms are unholy and unnatural places. Logically they should attract the unholy and the unnatural, like the bleached-blonde woman who must be somewhere in her mid-fifties or so who has clearly spent too much time and money getting her skin stretched and her boobs pumped. She'll strut into the gym, eyes darting left and right in an effort to catch a glimpse of whomever might be mentally undressing her very sloppily thrown together physique. The sad fact is that she thinks she's turning the head of every man in there (and perhaps a few of the women too) and in a way she's right; the only problem is that they're turning their heads away and not towards. What a train wreck.
Then there's Mr. Universe. Some people, they're usually pretty easy to spot, are clearly on the juice. Mr. Universe is clearly on the juice. Around noon each day he's in there, his football-sized biceps and melon-round shoulders working in unison with his protruding chest as he heaves the biggest weights available. The odd thing is that he's only ever in there for about the same duration as I am: an hour. I was puzzled. How could this twenty-something hulk of a man balloon to such a size on such a lean workout regimen? He looks like he could easily front up to a weight lifting competition and win. Easily. It has to be those BALCO vitamin shots.
For about a week I'd been hoping to get a chance to quiz him about his routine—fire a few shots across the bow and see how he reacts; probe the armour for a chink or two. On Monday, after my workout had wrapped up, we were both situated in the same locker area.
"Mind if I ask you a question?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"I see you in here pretty much every day about the same time that I'm in here. You seem to put in about the same amount of time into your workouts as I do but you're clearly in much better shape than I am."
With that remark I thought I could see his left pectoral muscle quiver at the compliment. His right one ticked in sympathy. They were happy.
"Yeah," he said, "I've been doing this a long time. And genetics has a whole lot to do with it."
And anabolic steriods, I thought to myself.
"How long have you been working out?" he asked.
"About four years," I replied. It's the truth.
"I've been at it for about ten, " he informed me without inflecting his words with the kind of smug self-satisfaction I was expecting, "and I'm just the kind of guy who puts on muscle mass easily."
Yeah, and I bet you're the kind of guy who finds steroids pretty easily too, huh? I thought it. I didn't say it.
Humbled in the presence of his mighty musculature, I mumbled out an ill formed response. "Yeah, that genetics stuff is right on. I just don't seem to add muscle very easily. Plus I do mostly cardio at lunch with some weights after work."
"Well," he confidently stated as his deltoids arched up like a couple of open drawbridges, "some people are no-gainers."
I heard it right. He was calling me a "no-gainer". By extension he was throwing himself into the gainer camp with all of his Schwarzenegger wannabe buddies and casting me out with the feebs. So be it. I'm a feeb. I can take it.
"So you only do one session of weights a day?" This was my attempt to call bullshit on him.
"I do some cardio in the morning and then the weights in the middle of the day."
And when do the 'roid shots happen, huh?
The conversation was done. He'd fended me off pretty well and it was clear from his now-dismissive body language—with a frame that big the only language his body knows is a form of yelling—that we were done.
"Well, it looks like you've got a routine that works for you. Well done."
It was over. There were no obvious puncture wounds, no clear signs of chemical enhancement abuse. Within a few minutes my kit bag was packed and I was meandering back out to the main entrance of the gym, ready to return to work. As I walked out I made sure I kept my chin up, my stride long and confident, while I did my utmost to detect out of the corner of my eye who was paying attention to this handsome man as he made his way out.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
And the Crowd Roars
This blog officially has an audience. You could count that audience on one hand. More accurately, you could count the audience on one finger. That lone, lonely member of a very, very small club is La Cubana Gringa. Thanks, Gringa. So long as I can be sure that there's at least one of you out there I'll keep churning out the piffle.
Get Back On the Horse
When you fall off the horse you have to dust yourself off and get back on.
In the wake of my GMAT meltdown I took a much needed break. A little introspection often goes a long way and in this instance it really did the trick. I've got a tendency to focus a little too intently on matters such as test taking, and this time around I really worked myself into a mess. The time pressures imposed by the test format; the performance expectations I'd placed on myself—the list of factors all added up to a very rocky frame of mind. Now my head has cleared, my feet are back on Earth and I'm about half way through GMAT Study: The Sequel. This time it's no more Mr. High-Strung.
If only that was 100% true. In actual fact there's still a measure of anxiety lurking inside of me and it's always likely to be there. Just look no further than my dad. Roger's no stranger to sliding into a frantic state of mind and he himself apologized for passing along his anxiety gene to his offspring. Thanks, Dad, but it's really not your fault. Or maybe it is, but he can't be blamed, can he? He can't help who he is anymore than I can.
In many ways it has felt like I was returning to square one on this whole test preparation kick. My initial method that was based upon blindly charging into revision armed with nothing but an over-inflated sense of confidence and precious little understanding of exactly how one takes standardized tests—I've never in fact taken one in my life; something that blows the minds of most of my American-born friends who are veterans of thousands of multi-choice exams. God bless the American education system and it's slavish reliance on standardized tests. The ship demanded a course correction and I ponied up for the Princeton Review series of books. They're none too shabby and instill a healthy sense of confidence, although I suspect their questions aren't quite as representative of what the GMAC concocts for the actual test. The Princeton Review's questions seem to test what the Princeton Review teaches quite well but might fall short of striking the same tone adopted by the GMAC. I suppose that's why the student is advised to pick up the official revision guide and use the Princeton Review techniques on real questions in order to shore up some knowledge. It's sound advice and I'm following it.
So I'm back in the saddle; not necessarily breaking into a gallop just yet but I'm moving along at what I'd consider to be a comfortable canter. There's still a lot of work to accomplish—lots of practice tests, getting the pacing right, developing swift recall on the problem topics—but at least the road seems more smooth and predictable. I'm even starting to enjoy the ride.
In the wake of my GMAT meltdown I took a much needed break. A little introspection often goes a long way and in this instance it really did the trick. I've got a tendency to focus a little too intently on matters such as test taking, and this time around I really worked myself into a mess. The time pressures imposed by the test format; the performance expectations I'd placed on myself—the list of factors all added up to a very rocky frame of mind. Now my head has cleared, my feet are back on Earth and I'm about half way through GMAT Study: The Sequel. This time it's no more Mr. High-Strung.
If only that was 100% true. In actual fact there's still a measure of anxiety lurking inside of me and it's always likely to be there. Just look no further than my dad. Roger's no stranger to sliding into a frantic state of mind and he himself apologized for passing along his anxiety gene to his offspring. Thanks, Dad, but it's really not your fault. Or maybe it is, but he can't be blamed, can he? He can't help who he is anymore than I can.
In many ways it has felt like I was returning to square one on this whole test preparation kick. My initial method that was based upon blindly charging into revision armed with nothing but an over-inflated sense of confidence and precious little understanding of exactly how one takes standardized tests—I've never in fact taken one in my life; something that blows the minds of most of my American-born friends who are veterans of thousands of multi-choice exams. God bless the American education system and it's slavish reliance on standardized tests. The ship demanded a course correction and I ponied up for the Princeton Review series of books. They're none too shabby and instill a healthy sense of confidence, although I suspect their questions aren't quite as representative of what the GMAC concocts for the actual test. The Princeton Review's questions seem to test what the Princeton Review teaches quite well but might fall short of striking the same tone adopted by the GMAC. I suppose that's why the student is advised to pick up the official revision guide and use the Princeton Review techniques on real questions in order to shore up some knowledge. It's sound advice and I'm following it.
So I'm back in the saddle; not necessarily breaking into a gallop just yet but I'm moving along at what I'd consider to be a comfortable canter. There's still a lot of work to accomplish—lots of practice tests, getting the pacing right, developing swift recall on the problem topics—but at least the road seems more smooth and predictable. I'm even starting to enjoy the ride.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Smile, Someone Loves You
Glancing back over my posts in recent times, it's apparent that nearly all of them skew towards the negative. I didn't call this blog The Polished Turd without reason, but perhaps a bit of cheerfulness wouldn't go astray.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Come Fly with Me
Let's talk on cellphones really loudly. Let's power dress. Let's attach our wireless electronics to our belts. Let's advertise to the world how important we are by attaching more than one. Let's strut down the concourse with obvious purpose. Let's pretend to think it's not obvious. Let's hope other people are noticing. Let's position our luggage next to a seat so as to preserve our personal space. Let's make sure we're the first in line. Let's cut in if we're not. Let's ignore the half-mumbled complaints of those around us as we edge our way in. Let's make a point of fidgeting as the jetway gets backed up. Let's block the aisle with our belly bulging from too many expensed meals while we shove, shove, shove our oversized luggage into the overhead bins. Let's argue with the flight attendant who points out that it won't fit. Let's finally be seated. Let's tilt the recliner back as far as it will go. Let's imagine that there's no seat behind us. Let's fall asleep and snore loudly. Let's have a nice flight.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
It's Coloradical
I'm on a business trip to Longmont, Colorado. The mountains are spectacular, the people agreeable and kind and I really don't care for it all that much. There's something about this particular part of the country that sets me off and it leaps into dreary, banal life the minute the car approaches the center town on the 119 approach.
Longmont is relatively new, spurred into growth from the embryo of an old rural town by the encroachment of a satellite tech industry. Searching for a cheaper place to drop a pile of engineers, a handful Silicon Valley tech companies demonstrated prudent financial wisdom by opening offices in the sprawling plains seated at the feet of the Rockies. Mimicking the outer reaches of greater Sacramento, the cookie-cutter homes plopped out on the bleak expanse by the over-enthusiastic rectum of the house shitting machine nestle up as close as humanly possible to a crop of newly sprouted strip malls replete with an Applebee's, a Staple's and a Best Buy. Just add a multiplex movie theater chain it's called a community, or maybe even a city. Just don't nestle up too close, of course, lest that precious buffer zone around the house that keeps the family "safe" be sacrificed. There are dangerous people out there who want what's inside and they'll do evil things to get in. Evil.
I keep the trips short, zipping in the night before and vacating without so much as a cloud of dust behind me the next evening. It's a sullen view of a part of the country that must have some charm buried somewhere, but so long as Longmont remains determined to reinvent itself as a bland facsimile of Anaheim I'll elect to keep my distance and visit only when I'm ordered.
Longmont is relatively new, spurred into growth from the embryo of an old rural town by the encroachment of a satellite tech industry. Searching for a cheaper place to drop a pile of engineers, a handful Silicon Valley tech companies demonstrated prudent financial wisdom by opening offices in the sprawling plains seated at the feet of the Rockies. Mimicking the outer reaches of greater Sacramento, the cookie-cutter homes plopped out on the bleak expanse by the over-enthusiastic rectum of the house shitting machine nestle up as close as humanly possible to a crop of newly sprouted strip malls replete with an Applebee's, a Staple's and a Best Buy. Just add a multiplex movie theater chain it's called a community, or maybe even a city. Just don't nestle up too close, of course, lest that precious buffer zone around the house that keeps the family "safe" be sacrificed. There are dangerous people out there who want what's inside and they'll do evil things to get in. Evil.
I keep the trips short, zipping in the night before and vacating without so much as a cloud of dust behind me the next evening. It's a sullen view of a part of the country that must have some charm buried somewhere, but so long as Longmont remains determined to reinvent itself as a bland facsimile of Anaheim I'll elect to keep my distance and visit only when I'm ordered.
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