Posts from — September 2007

A while back I had a strange thing happen to me. I was checking out a local yard sale and there it was, a living, breathing monkey smoking a cigarette with a post-it note on its forehead that read: “$20”.

“Excuse me are you really selling a monkey?” I asked the old man that was in charge of the second-hand sale.

“That’s right.” He replied as he spit a wad of tobacco on the grass. “You wanna buy it or what?”
“I’m not sure my lease allows it. And it has a smoking habit.”
“He has a job, he buys his own smokes.”

I woke up the next day noticing something was odd about my monkey. He looked different. I mean he was the same just that something wasn’t quite right.

The third day I figured out what it was: my monkey was growing and the change has suddenly become exponential. He also required more and more food, which was becoming a big problem, especially with rent due soon.

After a week, my monkey was huge, and I had to keep him outside. He also was becoming an attraction. I became worried about what would happen. The feeling wouldn’t last long.

In the middle of the night I awoke to the sound of the roof of my house being ripped off. The monkey stared at me and roared.

“Calm down monkey!” I yelled hoping to settle his fears. Something was getting him riled up.

I put on my smoking jacket and as I stepped out the front door, a crown of onlookers with pitches and torches were yelling at him. This wasn’t good. My monkey was very agitated now.

Suddenly a woman came forward from the crowd and got the monkey’s attention. He roared again and grabbed her, taking off down the street.

I ran downtown with the rest of the angry mob. Well, we walked fast because of the torches and pitchforks. When we got there, we saw a path of destruction and mayhem. Cars were turned over. Fire hydrants were shooting geysers of water. A man was running around on fire. There always seems to be one in every disaster.

Part of me was in shock, but another side of me was like “Wow!! I spent twenty bucks for a rampaging monkey!”

When we got to the tallest building in town, my monkey had already climbed to the top. Planes were shooting at him and he lost his balance, tumbling to the street below and shaking me out of slumber.

It was all a dream.

But I awoke sitting in that same yard sale, clutching a copy of the ‘King Kong’ DVD with a post-it note on my forehead that read: “$20”. I was also surrounded by chimps and apes.

(Reprinted from former blog)

So I am building a deck. I know, some of you right now are thinking: “Chris, you live in an apartment”. Oh so I can’t build one?

Anyways, I go to the Super Hardware Store Megaplex to look at the wonderful advantage of this new-fangled plastic desk surfacing that lasts much longer then wood I have been hearing so much about. No staining, no sanding. If you chip the ‘wood’ anywhere, it’s the same color under the surface.

But then the decision gets difficult. A saleswoman asks me what color I want.

“What are my choices?”
“Well, there’s grey…” She pointed to a cheery lady with a clipboard at a desk in a well-lit area of the store.
“Grey? Sounds like a lame color.”
“Sir, it’s the most popular.”
“What about brown?”
“You want brown?”
“Yes, you know, like the color decks are usually stained in?”
“But grey is what everyone else wants.”
“Except me, I’d like brown please.”
“Fine, Come with me.” She huffed away annoyed but at least I was getting a brown deck.

I followed her as we traversed the back of the store, down the stairs, and into the underground labyrinth of the building. Working around pipes, mice, and homeless vagrants, we arrived at what looked like the boiler room.

“This is for brown.” She said, opening the door and shoving me inside where I faced a crotchety old man standing behind a desk. The door slammed shut behind me.

“So, you want brown eh?” He stared me up and down. “Who sent you here?”
“Um, I’m just buying a deck.” I sensed his sense of mistrust. “I didn’t like the idea of a grey colored deck, so I guess here I am.” This convinced him I assumed.
“Good to hear!” The old man smiled. “Let me get the Tome.”
“Um, do you mean tome as in a book with a lot of pages?”
“Precisely!” he replied with glee slamming the book to the desk, causing a cloud of dust to burst out in all directions. “This is the Tome of Brown. It holds all the possible choices of tones of the color for your deck. Choose wisely.”
“Don’t you carry the normal brown color?”
“We don’t have JUST brown, there are many shades. There is light brown, medium brown, maple, sorta-dark brown, medium-but-also-light brown, chestnut brown, light…”

This patio-themed reenactment of the classis shrimp scene in ‘Forrest Gump’ went on for about six minutes until finally I had enough. “I think maybe, I want gray after all.”

“You’ll be sorry!” The curmudgeon shook his aged fist and arm at me as I hastily made my exit.

I arrived back at the surface and there was Ms. Grey, ready to set me up with my patio surfacing needs.

“Ok, I’ll take the hot, popular color.” I said, accepting my fate.
“That is an excellent choice Mr. Cameron if I do say so myself.” she said as she pointed to the Tome of Grey. “Now, what shade would you like? We have many to choose from.”

(Reprinted from former blog)

It is inevitable that there will be Star Trek films made well into in the future. I think even if we all blew each other up with nukes, the humans in 2130 would then act them out using sticks and stones, like Einstein predicted.

I figure at some point I will get to write a Star Trek script so I must be prepared. Not only do I have a plotline in mind, but I will cover ground my predecessors have not walked upon.

I give you Star Trek XXXVI: The Search for and Wrath of Chekhov

Catchy isn’t it? The name rolls off your tongue like the finest box wine.

The movie opens at the Interstellar Space Retirement Mobile Home Park. The retired crew of the Enterprise is sitting around on the bridge discussing something important.

Picard: “What is your favorite cover song? Number One your answer?”
Number One: “I think we should bat this around with the crew first.”
Worf: “The Klingon Code requires that I do not answer that question.”
Picard: “Code? I don’t understand.”
Worf: “It is a long-standing tradition….”

Twenty minutes later he finishes rambling and the question comes to Data.

Data: “I have processed the various frequencies and variations of the minutia as well as the minutiae and have determined the subsequent coaxial of the variables…”
Picard: “Your point?”
Data: “I believe I can remake any song as the ultimate musical masterpiece.”
Picard: “Show me.”

So they load Data up and everyone runs in to the control room to see him fight Morpheus…hold on wrong movie sorry.

Data plays his remake of Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell”. Horrific screeching and banging fill the air. The crew’s ears are bleeding.

Chekhov suddenly jumps up and yells “They have creatures in our ears!” then runs out the bridge door screaming. He arrives at an unguarded airlock and opens it, pulling him and everything around him out into space. He is killed in the process.

Some very expensive computer hardware got sucked out as well, including the transporter. Everyone knows how much of a pain in the ass it is to land a starship so if for example, the bathrooms were to fail the crew of the Enterprise would really be screwed.

This was also at the worst time because the starship payment was due next week. The last thing the crew needed was to shell out more money. Their social security checks barely cover the bills as it is.

Chekhov’s remains land on the Genesis planet, where he regenerates and grows up all over again. This time however he is subjected to non-stop repeats of “Umbrella” and the chorus of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” sung in French by an off-key tenor. This turns Chekhov insane, driving him to head up an evil reign of terror in the universe.

Meanwhile, the crew of the Enterprise gets wind of this news and heads to the Genesis planet. They want their money back and are one pissed-off crew. Starfleet also hears about it and sends a ragtag, bumbling group of misfit cadets to investigate the situation.

The cadets get to the Genesis planet but being that they always screw things up, get taken hostage by Chekhov and his not-so merry band of followers, Bavarian midgets angry at “Da Man”.

Chekhov makes it a point to put grub worms in their ears. He wanted scary ones that would dig in their ears and possess their mind but the local conditions were not good for that kind of species. He did however genetically enhance the grub worms to be four feet long.

Of course this would cause the host to explode instantly once it burrowed into the ear canal, which isn’t good for Chekhov’s cause. Killing the hostages doesn’t help leverage but Starfleet doesn’t know this and he takes advantage of their ignorance.

The Starfleet Hostage Reclamation Team shows up and engages Chekhov in a starship battle. In the midst of all this the Enterprise shows up with all kinds of police and lawyers.

During the climactic finale, Chekhov sneaks onto the Enterprise after eating Taco Bell and clogs every toilet on the starship. He is caught and arrested after an epic gunfight.

The battle then moves to the courtroom where it drags on and on for centuries.

In the end the lawyers have all the money, Starfleet files for bankruptcy, the case is dropped by reason of insanity and the Enterprise is still waiting for their insurance claim on the transporter to be processed. They also have to pee really really bad.

Fade Out

While I have an open mind that there is potential for life on other planets, it creates a paradox for us. If there are sentient beings out there, how does anyone go faster then the universe’s speed limit of light? We can not get to them and they cannot get to us. Perhaps we can send each other messages but how reliable would that be seeing that we are not always successful with a cell phone call to someone a town over?

Us: “We are going to bomb the crap out of you. Ha ha! We are such jokers on planet Earth. People always say a great way to start a conversation with a stranger is a good joke. So hello there Planet Z from Planet Earth!”

The message never makes it there in its entirety. Planet Z only received the first sentence and now they are on their way over to bomb the crap out of us with their super high-tech jet fighters and spaceships. Then it gets worse as they try to contact us just in case it is a miscommunication and not really a threat.

Planet Z: “Why did you say that?”
Us: “It was a joke!”
Planet Z: “We did not get joke part!”
Us: “You guys have no sense of humor!”
Planet Z: “No seriously, we did not receive the joke part. Man, we are idiots! Boy, you sure got us, trekking all the way over here like this. Are we on camera anywhere? I know there’s a hidden camera somewhere! Oh man you Earthlings are funny people. We want to share our vast wealth of technology, including the cure for all of your diseases and ailments, interstellar spaceflight, alternative clean fuel sources as powerful as oil, how to build societies underwater. There is so much we can teach you…”

Ka-Boom!!

Unfortunately, once again Planet Z’s cell phone dropped the call and Earth never heard any of that last paragraph of the transmission. Instead we aimed our nukes at the ships and blew them all up, thus eradicating an entire alien species.

With our luck that will be the only other sentient humanoid race in the universe besides us.

(Reprinted from the former blog)

One of the best things I liked about being in the fraternity I was in was that we were very good at messing with our recruits in time-honored and classic tests of their trust in us. One of these methods is affectionately known as the ‘Corn Flakes’ game.

The funny thing was, the pledges bought into it. Not because they were drunk, but rather that we were aware of the notion that sleep deprivation is very helpful to messing with people. We were fun like that. We would call them up at all hours, just to wake them up for no reason. We would round them up at three am to do something stupid like run around the fraternity house naked six times then send them back to their dorm rooms.

The game began with the customary lining up of the pledges along the ‘wall’ after a heavy night of drinking by us. Not them, just us. By limiting the pledges to alcohol we not only insured minimal problems but had designated drivers for the weekends. When we did get in trouble it was for parties that were too big, never abuse to a future member.

We once got suspended. Was it for recruiting violations? Nope. Was it for hazing? Nope. We had 1,000 people in a club that was allowed to max out at 800. We got in trouble for breaking the fire code. Thankfully, Great White wasn’t there.

Practical jokes on recruits that teach lessons are the way to go every time. Hell, one time we played one on our recruits on initiation night. We got them thinking they weren’t getting in because of information they don’t find until the formal initiation. That is a story for another time of course, just one of the many examples of how to do things right.

The plebes would spend many a night in front of the concrete foundation of our basement, sometimes standing, sometimes doing push ups. Some of them even gave the wall a name. We had weird recruits.

So we got angry, fake angry of course and started yelling at them because of something stupid, much like a dysfunctional relationship. We began smashing bottles on the floor and making a scene. Then we led all the pledges to the second floor and blindfolded them.

If someone ever walked in at that moment, they would have thought it was some kind of a hostage situation. There was screaming and yelling in the basement, and a bunch of people blindfolded on the first and second floors. Did I mention this was all taking place about 5 am EST? I have no idea why I included the time zone, consider me being thorough.

One at a time, we marched them down to the basement, made them take off their shoes and stand on a chair. We asked them about trust and if they trusted us. Eventually we got them to jump off the chair into the broken glass. Actually we ‘asked’ in the form of yelling.

Wow were we twisted or what? Of course not, this was a fraternity, not some kind of secret underground kung fu operation.

What the plebes did not know is that while they were upstairs, we swept all the glass up (we even bought one of those really coarse push brooms to make sure we got all the pieces) and replaced it with cornflakes and water. We moved them initially to the second floor for this reason, so they would not hear the clean-up. We also made sure to take the people who went through it to the first floor, away from the ones who hadn’t yet experienced the ritual.

Of course, once they jumped, they realized it wasn’t really broken glass and that they fell for a really obvious trick. I am sure some faked it, and others really believed it. But every time there was at least one person that bought into it hook line and sinker.

That guy always ended up being the one most eager to do the trick to the next pledge class. I think we were less a fraternity and more a reality show on messing with people in a harmless way.

Good times, good times.

(Reprinted from former blog)

Back in 2001, I tried out the business world for six months. The job I held was a sales position at a company in New Jersey that sold Irish products to stores in America. I learned two lessons there.

The first is that there are two types of Irish products: gifts Americans think Irish people want for gifts, and Irish goods and products Irish people actually want.

I don’t mean to offend anyone; my relatives are of that nationality. I am also part as well. So then it is ok to give a person from Canada a shot glass from Niagara Falls? Of course not but a lot of people would. Shamrock socks are not a great Christmas gift for someone from Ireland.

Anyways, throughout the year, we would pack up a van with our products and schlep to a sales show, usually at a big hotel. Once there, store owners from across the country would peruse our products and place orders while there.

This time we were headed to Illinois, a sixteen-hour trip. It was also the day after 9/11. That was eerie because we brought along one of those little portable televisions and watched the news the whole way there.

The surreal-ness would not end with the trip itself, but rather the time warp that is the Midwest. It is like another world out there, as if you stumbled into a real-life Pleasantville. That was lesson two.

An encounter with a person interested in our products set the tone for what I am talking about. It was a well-meaning woman who wanted a gift for someone.

Lady: “Do you have any gym shoes?”
Me: “Gym shoes?”
Lady: “Yes, gym shoes, you know for the gym, or tennis.”
Me: “Oh you mean sneakers.”
Lady: “Yes, that is what we call sneakers here, gym shoes. Or tennis shoes.”
Me: “Last time I heard sneakers called gym shoes people did the twist and went to sock hops.”
Lady: “As a matter of fact…”
Me: “I didn’t think you guys were that far back in time here.”
Lady: “We prefer to call it retro.”
Me: “Fair enough. You play a lot of classic rock here and I like it, so who am I to judge. So tell me, what do you call sneakers you don’t wear at the gym?”
Lady: “Tennis shoes.”
Me: “Are you playing tennis?”
Lady: “No. But the word sneaker does imply some form of stealth movement. Are you to infer that people who wear sneakers are bandying about like modern-day ninjas?”
Me: “Touché ma’am. What size are you looking for?”

I will never forget that trip.

==========================================

Like the man in the photo, human beings have a lot of strange habits. I could probably create a blog dedicated to the subject, but seeing that there are 234,542,657,864,765,123,564 sites already I am pretty sure someone is blogging about it daily. Still, I press on with some of my favorites and ones that interest me most.

Pick their nose at a stoplight

Did you know over half of all Americans do this? And we worry about shaking hands with Sheryl Crow. It is like the interior of a car is being inside a magical invisible thing and nobody outside is able to see you. It is always best to wait until traffic is moving then you can make quick, tactical strikes with surgical precision into the nostril cavity. That is how I approach nose cleaning while driving.

Do you roll the toilet paper down from the inside or the outside?

This is an interesting one to me. Frankly, my concern is whether I wiped enough, not which side the paper rolls down. Now if you want to talk crease or no crease, either you work in the hospitality industry or are obsessive-compulsive.

Reading while going to the bathroom

I don’t know, maybe it started with the Sears Catalog. Before toilet paper was common, you wiped your ass with that. I would imagine that over time, you would rip every page out. But on that first day, man, look at all this stuff!

Today, we have magazine racks, and piles of newspapers in our bathrooms, turning them into really smelly closet-sized libraries. Heck, I just finished reading a great book, all done on the throne. Of course it was not in one sitting.

People who stand too close to you online

Not only are these people making others uncomfortable, but they are usually talkative or fidgety. They can also tend to do things like examine what you are buying as well as trying to start up a conversation with every single person in line. Somewhere in the ‘Be Annoying for Dummies’ book it says that a core principle is breaking other’s personal space, I am convinced of this.

I think I would rather everyone just pick their nose in public then have to deal with these people.

Stage Fright

It’s a guy problem and it’s all mental. Basically it’s the concept that many men have a problem peeing in a urinal when there’s someone else in the bathroom. There is a counter to this, flushing the urinal. The sounds of water flowing and the noise distraction usually is enough to get the works flowing.

Of course the women right now are thinking: “we go to the bathroom in pairs, what’s the problem?” I don’t know what it is, but having experienced it, I think it’s the openness. While you are trying to go the bathroom and figure out what bad pick up lines you will use on that hot blond at the bar, there’s a 220 pound man smelling like Axe, cigarettes and booze standing right behind you, not to mention it has the climate of a tropical rain forest. There’s no door or stall, and there is a lot of pressure on you to do your thing quickly.

It is not just that type of bathroom. Go into any of them during a busy period and you will always find one guy spending ten minutes trying to urinate. It is funny and sad at the same time.

So what weird behavior do you see a lot?

(Reprinted from the former blog)

Everyone says they were one of the best but this is nonsense. Heck, The Coasters got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before the Beatles. And still we believe untruth. The way everyone acts, you would think ‘Yesterday’ was one of the most-played songs on the radio!

The super-letdown of the British Hairband era began with the arrival of the Beatles in America. Girls went crazy over four singers with bad hairdos that couldn’t carry a note.

We all know who the genius behind the Beatles was: Ringo Starr. Paul and John kept him under wraps despite Ringo penning every one of their hit singles. The pressure got to be too much though, and they caved in and allowed Starr to sing. But in a show of control and who’s really in charge, they stuck it to him by picking Yellow Submarine. That put the drummer in his place but it took its toll on the band, leading to their breakup in 1974.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The band was a smash hit despite their talent weaknesses, achieving great success in the mid 1960’s. But hot tunes only last so long and The Beatles sang during a time when radio was pay-to-play and all their hits were manufactured. They had nothing on the real dominating acts of the 60’s like The Monkees and the Turtles.

As they matured, the Beatles found they had to come up with a new niche to support their struggling record sales. So they all grew their hair long and started doing drugs. By this time, those that were hypnotized as children to their early hits were sucked back in as teens. And thus the hippie movement was born.

So not only did they write and play bad music but they gave everyone the idea that drugs are wicked cool and not working or showering is even better. Problem is the hippies weren’t making millions off their record sales like the marketing geniuses of the Beatle corporate machine.

And how would that music fare today? It’s all the same chords and beats, a monkey could play their songs. Top 40 Radio today is much less formulaic, the Beatles’ plan for success would never have worked in 2007.

There is also much more diversity on the radio these days, and record companies look to invest in talent. Look at all the ability American Idol has shown exists in people like your next-door neighbor. I would never have dreamed people were so gifted, there is no way everyone was that good 40 years ago.

You know, it’s no surprise Michael Jackson is broke. Think it was the court costs and his illicit, creepy behavior that did it? Think again. He bought the world’s most overvalued music library, the rights to almost all the group’s songs. I suppose we should be thankful though. If it weren’t for him, we’d be forced to listen to bands cover the Beatles. I’m glad we have better choices, like a new cut of Free Bird. Fourteen versions of that song so far and I never tire of any of them.

Rock on Good Charlotte!

Great, one more piece of tech people can whip out of their pocket or purse every thirty seconds. But this is not done to check out a great video on the web or search for a good recipe for chicken. It is to see if you got a phone call. It vibrates, it rings, yet if you don’t physically look at the phone you might miss a call.

Apparently, we all believe our eyes have the magical ability to make people call you just by staring at your cell phone screen, like some kind of hypnotic power. You are getting sleepy, very sleepy. Then your Razr rings and wakes you up. The phone Matrix has you man.

So is it safe to say we have a cell phone addiction? I guess that is like saying managed health care isn’t quite health insurance, or that Michael Jordan was a pretty good basketball player.

Imagine if we acted this way twenty years ago. There you are at home, lifting up your landline rotary phone receiver and saying “hello”. It didn’t ring but you pick it up on the premise that someone might be calling at that very moment. You repeat this behavior every minute or so all day long.

See how silly this is? You look like a mental patient. But doing this today in the middle of a supermarket is alright. The other day while grocery shopping I watched someone repeatedly check their phone while waiting in line. No one looked at her and wondered what mental hospital gave this woman a one-way ticket to my home state.

It is even to the point where we say screw the handset we want an ear piece instead. Now even more people look like they are crazy until you see the little thing with the blinking blue light on the side of their head. At least before I could tell they were on the phone.

They might as well make phones that we can implant into our hands, put the receiver on our second and third finger, and embed the microphone in our lower palm. Then you can look like your either bored, thinking, or both.

Or crazy.

Cell phones have taken us part of the way there, might as well go for the coup de grace. That’s French for we surrender and in this case we are giving into our Chocolates and Motos and always wanting to know “where you at dawg?” They got us man, and we will end up selling our kids and our clothes for a tech fix.

They are coming for you Neo and I don’t know what they are going to do.