More Random Thoughts

I think it would be awesome to invent a language...not Klingon, that's too fucking geeky even for my tastes...and then have a baby, and only speak to the child in that invented language.

The poor kid would grow up fluent in something that no one else speaks.

I'd do it, but this would require an attention span of at least a couple years.

Not to mention, I'm in no position to have a child...I'm sitting down, and I'm alone.

I went to the PNC Arts Center tonight to see Sheryl Crow and John Mayer. It's one of those sorta-outdoor venues with the roof over the seating area and lawn seating in the back. Of course, it rained for the first time in a couple weeks. Fortunately, I was one of the dry ones. The concert was pretty good, although each set had its flaws.

Mat Kearney opened for both of them, and while his music is fine, I just wasn't that drawn to it. Sheryl Crow did more of a "Greatest Hits" thing. I'd have preferred to hear more from "Wildflower," but I can understand the need to go through all the hits from past records. John Mayer closed the show, and his set was a bit...weird. His new album hasn't been released yet, and I get the impression he's not too thrilled about being on tour right now. I wouldn't be surprised if someone at the record company said, "John, you haven't had an album in a couple years, and it might be a good idea if you tour now to remind people you're still alive. We need it to boost sales when the album comes out." So, he's stuck with that unenviable position of trying to play new material that no one has heard in front of a crowd that just wants to hear "Room for Squares."

Anywho, I'll try to post more often, but in the event I don't, I direct you to the first entry.

You were warned.

"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right"

I'm not political. I hate politics, but not politicians. I believe a lot of them get into it with the best of intentions, and then sell their souls in the hopes of doing some good in the future.

The recent Middle East news really bothers me. I feel for Israel. I feel for the Lebanese. I feel for the Palestinians that just want to raise their kids in peace. We need a Centrist revolution. We may not always see eye-to-eye, but we don't kill each other over it.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Jake's blog got me thinking. Not so much about the poker thing. He's better than me after all, but about how we present ourselves to others. None of us ever show all facets of ourselves to others, even those closest to us. Our friends know things our family doesn't. Our co-workers know different things than our significant others. So who am "I?" "I" am different things to different people, and we all have some strange need to maintain that facade, with all its degrees of truth, in front of those various cliques.

Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on

It's amazing how much the people of our past have an effect on our lives long after they've left it. Ex-husbands, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends. A song, a movie, a restaurant, a joke, reminding you of a time you were deliriously happy or suicidally morose. I had one of those moments today, but I'm kinda thankful for it. We're nothing more than the sum of our experiences anyway, and I'm all about having good anecdotes.

I wanted to see you walking backwards.
To get the sensation of you coming home.
I wanted to see you walking away from me.
Without the sensation you're leaving me alone.

This was a spur o' the moment post. I probably have more, but I should save it for another time. Extra points to those that can tell me the songs and artists in this post.

Creative Writing 101 meets "Night at the Improv"

I'm going to add a space in the margin for links in the very near future, which will encompass any sites I've referenced in my entries. That should make it easier to jump out quickly when you're tired of reading my drivel.

I have some new ones I want to mention now just to get them out there...

My Poker Blog - There are other poker-related blogs there to peruse as well. I recommend the ones by zinn0 and crack. If you're not interested in poker, I'd skip it. Posts don't stray from that topic often.

Jake's Blog - He writes much better than I do. It has a lot of poker content, but I think it's entertaining for anyone. If you like mine, you'll definitely like his.

Now for the meat of the entry...

I'm not creatively prolific. Sure, I'll have things happen day to day that give me a brief spark of inspiration, but not nearly enough to keep me and you, I hope, my readers, happy. So I'm proposing a creative writing exercise: send me your topics, via comments, and I will do my best to turn them into entertaining blog entries. Some of my attempts will undoubtedly suck, of that I am certain, and other times I'll have things that I want to write about regardless of any pending ideas; but I'll do my best to use every idea in a timely fashion. No topic is out-of-bounds, although I'd rather you stayed within the boundaries of reasonable taste.

So have at it. I look forward to reading your ideas.

Two for Tuesday

Knowing my personality, a co-worker forwarded me this web game link that she thought I would enjoy. Her assessment was spot on, of course, and I spent the next ten minutes committing monkey atrocities across the continental US. After managing to get my name in the daily Hall of Infamy a few times, I took it upon myself to drive my friend's name completely off the leaderboard. Having accomplished that mission, I didn't give it another thought.

At work the next morning, I'm going through my usual routine: get my coffee, check Yahoo! news for anything interesting, clean up e-mail from the overnite, etc. I'm looking for a web address in my URL history, notice the game link, and figure I'll check the scoreboard. You know, just for the hell of it. The scores were cleared from the previous day, but...

...her name was back on the list!

Now, I know for a fact that she did this on purpose. She's just like me: ultra-competitive about utterly meaningless things. It's a horrible way to live, but I digress. I had no choice but to wipe her off the list again.

And now I wait. Wait for her to make her end run yet again, at which time the cycle repeats. Eternal vigilance is the price of Furious George superiority.

Intermission
Now, since I've been such a crappy blogger for the past week, I've decided to give you a two-fer. I hope you enjoy Act II.
Intermission End

Saturday was a good day. A bunch of friends got together for a picnic/poker game, and we all had a blast. The host is one of those guys of whom I'll always be jealous: he can build stuff and it will look like the picture when he's done. He put together a really nice game room in his basement, complete with a poker table that he built himself. Padded rail, drink holders, the nines.

This was our second gathering at his place in the past few weeks. The first time we were there, he still hadn't done anything with the backyard; but, he's done something with it now. He leveled an entire area, and built himself a brick patio (650 bricks, I believe is the count); and he did it on a single Saturday. Absolutely astounding. His knack with his hands does lend itself to some ribbing from the rest of us though. Here are a few of the gems:

When we noticed he had a pallet with quite a few bricks left over from the patio:

What are you going to do with those? Build a shelter for the homeless?

When we were discussing where we'd have the next party:

I'd have you over to my place, but Brian hasn't built it yet.

When he was talking about his other plans for the backyard:

Brian: I'm going to put quoit pits over there, and there.
Us: I suppose you'll have RF chips in the quoits and auto-scorers in the pegs too, eh?

Unfortunately, while building his patio, he managed to bury his wedding ring under the bricks. He's pretty sure he's got the area narrowed down, but he'd still rather use a metal detector to find it. Turns out my dad has one, and I offered to bring it over to search for the ring, but only on three conditions.

1. We have to wear eye patches.
2. We have to say, "Arrrrrr" every time the detector goes off.
3. He must hereafter refer to his ring as "buried treasure."

I also plan on keeping any loose change we find, but I'll spring that one on him later. I want to get agreement on the other points first.

Cynicism, Sarcasm and a Falling Down Kind of Life

Ok, the topic has nothing to do with this submission, except that I am composed of the first, I rely on the second and I'm living the third.

Plus I thought it was a really cool title for one of my entries.

I just wasted it.

...GOD DAMMIT...I have a limited amount of creativity...I can't be doling it out all haphazard like...

*deep fucking breaths*

Ok. I need you folks to help out. I've gotten some feedback from readers via other methods, BUT I WANT COMMENTS! Come on! Throw me a bone here, especially those of you that were victims of my text message assault last weekend. If you got that message, it was solely because I value your opinion, and that should be enough. Make it anonymous, I don't care.

Now for the appeasement part of our program...

Chris: Here. You always enjoy my misery. Last poker reference you get.
Aaron: A shout out. You still owe me, as far as I'm concerned.
Me: I rule.
Jake: Where the fuck are you man?

Alright, I'm done being the parent. Chime in, people. I'm losing my motivation.

Empty Calories

No new ideas today, so I'm going to do a "random thoughts" type thing. Most of these are things people have heard from me before. Some are brandy-spankin' new right out o' da box.

At some point, the complete running time of my DVD collection will exceed the amount of time I have remaining to live.

When I see dead deer on the side of the road in the morning, I sometimes think a small percentage of them are just drunk victims of a deer fraternity prank. They'll wake up around noon with a hangover and "Bambi" written on their forehead in permanent marker.

Of all the classes of people that I would expect to drive slowly, senior citizens are far down on the list. If anyone should be in a hurry to get somewhere, it's the octogenarians.

I was driving to work one morning, and the man in front of me looked remarkably like Manuel Noriega. It turned out to be a woman who looked remarkably like Manuel Noriega.

After a friend's nuptials a few years back, the wedding party went for photos in a "memorial park." While the bride and groom were off doing a Heathcliff and Catherine thing on some gazebo, I and my fellow attendants were off looking at headstones. I suggested we find spousal plots with only one internment, and play matchmaker with the remaining living persons. Unfortunately, we had to go to the reception shortly thereafter, so it didn't get very far. I consider it a missed opportunity.

I think a handful of casualties from the WTC are people that showed up for work late, were spared a horrible death in the towers and used it as an opportunity to escape their lives and start over elsewhere. Those people would be interesting to meet.

I was offered a complimentary room in Las Vegas for New Year's Eve a couple years back. I'd already been there the prior new year, so I decided to pass. A friend said, "I don't think you'll ever have a regret on your deathbed about spending too many New Year's Eves in Vegas." I replied, "I will if my deathbed is in the North Tower of the Las Vegas Hilton on New Year's Eve!"

Hopefully I'll have a topic tomorrow.

"You hear me talking, hillbilly boy?"

I finally got around to cataloging my DVD collection, found something quite disturbing and it's not the Bewitched SE/TV Sampler combo pack.

Well, that's disturbing too; but on a whole other level that I'm not prepared to share outside the comfort of the therapist/patient relationship.

The real dilemma is I own a lot of fullscreen DVDs. I must have on the order of 10-12 of those piece o' crap, pan 'n' scan, 1.33:1 aspect ratio discs that people buy because "whineI don't like the black bars on the screenwhine," and that's just too many. I'm an early adopter. I've had 16:9 HDTV with progressive scan DVD for a loooooong time now. I've never knowingly purchased anything other than letterboxed movies, even on VHS.

Anyway, there are some of these DVDs that are easily explained, like older, less popular movies where the studios took the cleanest copy they had and burned it to a disc with a menu. I can live with that. At least I can watch the film.

But I have some that I simply shouldn't. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for one. The Bourne Identity is another. I can't fathom how I could walk out of a video store with this format, short of my family being held at gunpoint. So that leaves one viable explanation...

Someone broke into my apartment and replaced my widescreen editions with the fullscreen variety!

I'm working on a list of suspects, and I don't think it will be too difficult to narrow down. The perpetrator only needs to exhibit these few characteristics:

1. They must know where I live.
2. They must have the list of movies that I own.
3. They must have already purchased these movies in their fullscreen version.
4. They must have subsequently had a change of heart concerning their prior purchase.
5. They must have just enough conscience to make the switch and still leave all my other possessions untouched.

Now I can't imagine there are more than 20 or 30 people that fit that profile, so I should make short work of this. And when I found out who's responsible? Oooh hoo hoo...

I'm going to call a couple of hard pipe-hitting niggers to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.

Never to be one without a plan "B", I will have to decide whether to repurchase these discs in the correct format, assuming I can't recover them via medieval means. I may leave that decision to any of the readers I've managed to garner through my guerilla ad campaign.

That is all. Maybe I'll find something new to bitch about tomorrow.

"But the shopkeeper and his son is another story altogether..."

Three posts in two weeks, and two on consecutive days! It almost looks like I care.

Anywho, I happened across Wayne's World 2 on TV this morning. Now, this normally wouldn't cause any more of a stir in me than the numerous times I've gotten sucked into watching Sidekicks or Hard to Kill. All fine entertainment choices given the appropriate frame of mind. But today, the "2" struck a chord.

Not so much that it was an awful sequel. In retrospect, such a bad movie doesn't really warrant Roman numerals in the title. I'm more filled with a sense of foreboding about the pending release of Clerks 2/II. They've moved much more to the Superbowl-style designation, but it still looks like they're on the fence as to whether it will...well...suck. I like all of Kevin Smith's work, and I'll undoubtedly be heading to the theater to see this when it's released, but I've a feeling I'll have liked it better the first time I saw it...when it was called Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Revisiting old favorites and wish fulfillment is fine; but, you shouldn't do it more than a once a decade.

So here's me in optimistic mode now. I really really hope I don't regret going to see this movie. I'd hate to see Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier share the fate of the aforementioned proprietors of the sweet shop:

...I had to beat them to death with their own shoes.

Music and Substance Abuse

It's entirely possible I have a drinking problem. Boozing it up for five out of the last seven days probably constitutes a "bad indicator." However, it has yet to interfere with work/band activites, so perhaps I have a window of redemption available...

...fuck redemption.

One of these drunken evenings was spent at the Starland Ballroom in scenic Sayreville, NJ. I had spent considerable time there in my younger years when it was called Hunka Bunka. Lately, it's become a stop for some more established acts. I have tickets to see Skid Row on the 24th, and Aimee Mann on the 26th (who I consider to be the Joni Mitchell of my generation). Argue that point with me if you want...I don't give a fuck.

The two bands I had the pleasure of seeing on that fateful night were stellastarr* and Nada Surf. If you have the opportunity to see them locally, I strongly recommend you do so. There is no greater joy than seeing good live music, and these bands put on a great show.

That is all for the moment. I'm going to finish the last 3 beers I have in the fridge and then crash till morning. I 'm supposed to visit the parental units tomorrow. They hate it when I don't show up.

I'll blame it on the booze.

Not a Poker Blog

Regardless that this was inspired by poker playing friends, this will not be a blog about poker. I don't like poker too much these days. I still play, but I'm filled with a general self-loathing every time I do, mostly because I'm just not very good at it.

I'm also not much of a writer. I've got a decent grasp of the language, but I have nothing to say that hasn't been said more eloquently by shinier, happier people.

The only thing about this "blog" that might be considered remotely clever is the title, which was a play on this band's name.

That's about all I had. I wouldn't bother visiting this thing often. Any other posts, as few and far between as they may be, will not be any more interesting, enlightening or entertaining than this one.

You've been warned.