Miscalculation

Well, my streak of attending every year’s Hub on Wheels has been broken, in somewhat lame fashion. I knew the forecast was going to call for rain today, and sure enough, when the alarm went off at 6:45 a.m. I heard the drops falling on the roof. After checking out the giant green wash across the radar map on TV, my resolve just drained totally away. Screw it, I really do hate cycling in the rain—especially cold rain. So, full of regret, I went back to bed.

That kinda sucked. What really sucks, though, is when I got back up officially at 8:30, it wasn’t raining anymore. And it didn’t rain again at all until around 1 p.m., well after the Hub ride would’ve been over. So I BLEW IT. BAH.

Now I have an official 2009 Hub on Wheels cycling jersey, and I didn’t even ride the damn ride. BAH.

Review: Star Trek

Battle stations, everybody! Since I saw Star Trek on Sunday I’ve been thinking about how I might go about reviewing it. It’s not easy to sift through everything I think about it, and moreover there’s already a huge amount of discussion about the movie on the net, so it’s hard to be original. Hence I’m going to approach this as a meta-review.

First, as a longtime and fairly dedicated ST fan, it’s expected that I wouldn’t like the movie. And indeed I didn’t like it. Although while I was actually sitting in the theater, dazzled by all its prettiness and enjoying the often humorous dialogue and all the biiig explosions and the rest of the usual summer movie jazz, I did have a good time.

Then the lights came up, and the thinking started. Bad move. This is definitely not a movie to think about, under any circumstances. Don’t try to sift through any of the completely incoherent plot. Don’t try to figure out how the characters are motivated to do what they do. Don’t expect consistency from recurring plot devices. None of it will do anything for you but turn you into what is apparently the worst possible thing: the Cranky Fan.

One thing that keeps cropping up in online discussions of this movie is a neverending scorn for people who are Trek fans. Yeah, a few loonies out there actually dress as Klingons or commit other Trek-related weirdness. But never mind them, they’re a tiny cohort and outliers on the chart. Meanwhile, us sane people who have enjoyed a lot of Trekness over the last few decades, are we really to be ridiculed for thinking this movie sucked? If you’ve got a counterargument that it didn’t suck, then please lay it out. Forget the ad hominem crap and come up with some substantive reasons why it’s good. (Please try to move beyond the following: miniskirts, explosions, lensflare.)

Another thing I’m hearing is the idea that Trek fans can’t complain about the nonsensical supernova behavior or the other head-scratching plot elements in the movie because we’re willing to buy into impossibilities like faster-than-light travel or antimatter explosions or whatever. Hey folks, I don’t have a problem with science fiction. I do have a problem when a movie plot can’t scrape together the tiniest bit of internal consistency, or make any damn sense. Who cares if the concept of warp travel is crappy science? If a person or thing acts one way in one situation, and a different way when the plot requires it, that’s crappy storytelling. All stories deserve to be told well, whether it’s Trek or L.A. Confidential or Shakespeare. This one is told incredibly poorly.

Eh. I sound defensive through this whole post, but I don’t think I should have to defend myself. I’m bummed that this newest Trek incarnation is so lousy, and I don’t have to apologize for that. (Be glad I never even tried to watch Enterprise, heh! That looked like all kinds of suck.) In the meantime, maybe I’ll see the Wolverine movie again, that turned out to be better than this one. And maybe with the scads of money this movie will make, they’ll be able to make a better film next time.

Closing time

Another step toward sanity and happiness was taken today as we closed on the sale of the condo. I am now free of debt, free of a crazy neighbor, free of thinking about repairs and termites and crabgrass. Right now I feel totally miserable about the whole thing. I think about all the money that was made off of my unhappy circumstance by the real estate brokers and the lawyers, the town, as they charged me to have my smoke detectors inspected, and the state, who made sales tax on the transaction. The idea of home ownership is, in my opinion, far shinier and more attractive than the reality. From big things, like having a neighbor move in who is totally insane and incapable of conducting her own affairs, to little things, like hearing a drip of water and wondering what you need to fix. Economic downturn and five-figure losses, and having to recaulk the bathtub. It all kind of sucks, really.

I don't even have to stay in the sphere of the personal or emotional when it comes to this topic. In a March 2009 Atlantic article, Richard Florida touched on the mythical nature of home ownership as a desirable goal. Here’s a lengthy, but relevant, quote:

The housing bubble was the ultimate expression, and perhaps the last gasp, of an economic system some 80 years in the making, and now well past its “sell-by” date. The bubble encouraged massive, unsustainable growth in places where land was cheap and the real-estate economy dominant. It encouraged low-density sprawl, which is ill-fitted to a creative, postindustrial economy. And not least, it created a workforce too often stuck in place, anchored by houses that cannot be profitably sold, at a time when flexibility and mobility are of great importance.

So how do we move past the bubble, the crash, and an aging, obsolescent model of economic life? What’s the right spatial fix for the economy today, and how do we achieve it?

The solution begins with the removal of homeownership from its long-privileged place at the center of the U.S. economy. Substantial incentives for homeownership (from tax breaks to artificially low mortgage-interest rates) distort demand, encouraging people to buy bigger houses than they otherwise would. That means less spending on medical technology, or software, or alternative energy—the sectors and products that could drive U.S. growth and exports in the coming years. Artificial demand for bigger houses also skews residential patterns, leading to excessive low-density suburban growth. The measures that prop up this demand should be eliminated.

If anything, our government policies should encourage renting, not buying. Homeownership occupies a central place in the American Dream primarily because decades of policy have put it there. A recent study by Grace Wong, an economist at the Wharton School of Business, shows that, controlling for income and demographics, homeowners are no happier than renters, nor do they report lower levels of stress or higher levels of self-esteem.

And while homeownership has some social benefits—a higher level of civic engagement is one—it is costly to the economy. The economist Andrew Oswald has demonstrated that in both the United States and Europe, those places with higher homeownership rates also suffer from higher unemployment. Homeownership, Oswald found, is a more important predictor of unemployment than rates of unionization or the generosity of welfare benefits. Too often, it ties people to declining or blighted locations, and forces them into work—if they can find it—that is a poor match for their interests and abilities.

In other words, owning a home, despite the encouragement of REALTORS(tm), your parents, the federal government, and just about anybody who is not actually on the hook for your housing problems, is not a one-way ticket to happiness and prosperity. If I had been renting this place, it would have been a hell of a lot easier and cheaper for me to leave when the situation got so unpleasant so fast. And I have a feeling that part of the neighbor’s stubborn refusal to compromise with us, or even understand her own situation, stems from the fact that she’s just as tied to her place by a mortgage as we are. Once it became clear that cooperative living was impossible, one of us had to take a huge hit to extricate ourselves from the situation. And that, my friends, sucks. That minor tax deduction for mortgage interest does not soften the blow, believe me.

Anyway, once we move this weekend, this whole debacle will start receding into the rear-view mirror. Then I can get back to posting Halo 3 screenshots and talking about tennis and cycling. I do want to thank you loyal peeps who have given me much sympathy through this whole thing. It is much appreciated.

Rant of the month

I’ve been holding back from blogging this month due to being overwhelmed with house-selling trials and tribulations. To get the facts out of the way early, there was an offer, there was counteroffering, there was an agreement accepted, there was a home inspection, there was negotiation over the Purchase and Sale Agreement, there was signing of P&S. So that’s where we are now. “Pretty awesome!” you’re thinking. Well, in the sense that there is calm after the category 5 hurricane. Okay, I’m being overly dramatic. But dammit, this is my blog. In fact, one of the things holding me back from writing about recent events was that I’ve been feeling like a major league whiner throughout this whole process, and I was hesitant to inflict that on anyone else. But then I realized, hey, that’s the whole point of posting random shit on the Internet, right? So here’s the ranty stuff.

Jesus holy fuckos this has been such a nightmare. The buyers have been high maintenance lowballing foot-dragging dipshits throughout the process. Yeah, I too was a first-time buyer once, and was all of those things. But it is still not pleasant to be on the selling end of such a transaction. They’re getting a gorgeous condo in excellent condition* and they should get the fuck over their petty issues. In other words, it’s retarded to try to write into P&S that I need to put up all the window screens in the back porch. Uh, yeah? They’re in the basement, which you saw. I highly recommend you learn how to install a window screen. It takes about thirty seconds. One of the onerous responsibilities of home ownership.

(*note: Yes, they are actually entering into a world of misery when they discover the neighbor they have acquired. I recognize this evens things out a little in the long run.)

Meanwhile, the apartment search has commenced. Swami and I hoofed through six units this last weekend, some of which were pretty nice, and some of which were atrocious. Nothing as spectacular as cheetah wallpaper, but definitely some head-scratching moments. Like, why does this attic bedroom have a sink in it? Just parked against a wall, minding its own business? Very weird.

But never mind the informative details, I’m in rant mode here. As I look over potential places to live, and fight with these buyers over astonishingly small amounts of money, I am struck over and over again how this whole damn situation was shoved up my ass without warning. Two years ago, as you read on this very blog, I spent quite a bit of time and thought choosing the place we bought to live. Checked out the neighbors, sucked up to a seller who was a total douchebag, made a full-price offer. And I got a place that was great. And then I lived as if I cared about the people around me, because dammit I actually do. And also because I do expect that kindness in return. Meanwhile, Fate took a huge crap on my head and I get the following: metric assloads of batshit craziness from my new neighbor, leading to me getting a sinking feeling in my stomach every time I turn onto the street on my way home from somewhere; a huge financial hit from selling a house that’s lost about 15% of its value since we bought; prospective apartments that are farther from work, farther from various conveniences, in poorer condition, lacking some of the amenities I have now, or some combination of all of that. It sucks. Sucks. Sucks.

For a while I tried not to let it bother me, tried to be fatalistic. But I’m just overwhelmed with a bitter combination of outrage and self-pity. And my neighbor has the gall to whine to me in voice mails about how miserable she is because of what this has all been like for her. Oh, fuck that. I feel no pity for someone who isn’t even aware of the misery she causes others, even those who have tried to do right by her. And maybe in some other life she will come to learn of her responsibility for her own unhappiness. I sincerely hope so. And once I manage to pry the black claws of her fucked-up-ness from around my life, I might even be able to forgive her for what’s happened, since she’s obviously a person too damaged or stupid or senile to grasp the reality she’s made. But fuck, I am not feeling particularly charitable right now.

Well, that does it for now. It did take a little weight off me, so perhaps there is some catharsis to be had in shouting out to the faceless void. And some day this will all be a bizarre chapter in my past that I can joke about. When will that be, exactly?

Speechless

I don’t think I have it in me to get into a really detailed discussion of recent events about the election, but I do have a couple of things to get off my chest.

It all comes down to just one question: are these people kidding me? The Republican Party, the one that’s bursting full of people over the age of 50 who bemoan the crassness of today’s culture, has a VP candidate whose family life looks like the plot of a bad reality show. You’re telling me that the people who shrieked and freaked at the whole Monica Lewinsky debacle are totally cool with Palin’s teenage daughter getting knocked up and forced into marriage with a self-admitted douchebag? Cool with the idea that Palin, whose daughter is going through what is probably one of the more traumatic scenarios an adolescent can imagine, has seized upon it as the perfect opportunity to reaffirm her political stance on abortion? And her speech last night, what little of it I could watch—is she running for host of the Tonight Show or vice president? Cracking jokes and bashing a man who is worthy of respect whether you want him to be president or not? Give me a break. Her speech was all about the usual Republican haterade, delivered in the kind of vapid content-free style that you get out of the Cosmo you’re stuck reading while waiting for a haircut. “Ten Reasons We Think You Should Dump Obama!”

What a fucking joke. And “joke” is the operative word. Who’s responsible for turning discussion of political issues in this country from substantive debate to an idiotic junior-high-school popularity contest? Not the goddamn Democrats. Jesus. After the last eight years and this kind of nonsense, does anybody think the current crop of Republicans has any ability to govern?

Now that the numbness has worn off

Yesterday I completed the second skirmish in my war against periodontitis, getting the other half of my teeth scaled to get rid of all the nasties in there. Fortunately, it wasn’t a bad experience at all; I had the Crowded House turned up on my music player and the novocaine did its thang. Thanks to everybody who reassured me about what the whole thing was going to be like—it really wasn’t bad at all.

But despite all this happiness and sunshine, it’s time for me to pitch a bitch. In this most timely article, we learn that oral health is being shown by more and more studies to play a significant role in overall physical health. That’s interesting news, and let me tell you that I’d happily have that scaling done many times over my lifetime if I meant I was less likely to have a heart attack or develop diabetes, osteoporosis, or whatever other diseases are lurking out there that might be linked to gum disease.

That’s not the bitch part. Here’s the bitch part. I just spent $450 getting this procedure done, and because I’ve exceeded my paltry maximum coverage for the year on preventive dental care, I’ll have to pay entirely out of pocket for my next required cleaning and exam in November. Does this make a damn bit of sense to anyone? I could go to a doctor for a bruised elbow or a freaking hangnail and pay one lousy $15 copay. Meanwhile, I take what are obviously considerably more crucial steps to preserve my health, and it costs me something around $600? Why exactly is dental care separate from medical care anyway, in the tiny minds of the healthcare and insurance industries? (Yeah, the cynic in all of us knows the answer to that, but let’s ask the question anyway.) Diseases like diabetes and heart disease are long-term, expensive illnesses to treat. They kill people all the time, for pity’s sake. Doesn’t it make sense to throw me $600 to head all that shit off, rather than hold on to the money now and risk having to spend a million trying to treat me down the road?

And here’s where I thank fate and fortune that I have the money to pay for this stuff. It pisses me off to think how many people are not so lucky. Why the hell can’t we fix the healthcare system in this damn country.

This rant has been brought to you by early stage periodontitis. Make sure you know how to floss properly, people! It sucks but it beats the alternatives. And no one else is going to help your ass out when it comes to it, either.

Ups and downs

Down: Periodontitis diagnosed today
Up: It’s early-stage and can be reversed!
Down: Requires anxiety-causing procedures over a couple of weeks next month

Up: New tennis racket still awesome!
Down: Four cancelled doubles matches thanks to the crappy weather

Up: Tour de France!
Down: Lingering cynicism about the Tour thanks to doping scandals

Up: Obama!
Down: Obama’s stance on FISA

Big Up: going to Vermont for a cycling vacation next week!
Down: Ain’t no downside to that.

Angst trifecta

Got beat again playing doubles yesterday (new racket notwithstanding), George Carlin died, and Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” is stuck in my head. If that don’t just mean it’s Monday.

Overhyped

I feel obligated to respond to the suggestion that LeBron James is not overhyped, as I claimed over here.

A short discussion of semantics is called for as a preliminary. Labeling James overhyped has nothing to do with whether he’s a good basketball player; it would be downright idiotic to claim that he has no skill or talent. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s about the hype. In the immortal words of Public Enemy, don’t believe it.

First, he hasn’t actually achieved anything. And no, I don’t believe for a second that a player has to win a championship to be considered an excellent player. But consider the attention James gets, the adulation, the seemingly unconditional love and attention. And consider what he has delivered in return.

Second, he receives insane levels of preferential treatment from the refs and the league. He travels to the basket all the time. Players who foul him receive harsh punishments; when he metes out similarly flagrant fouls on other players, he is protected from the consequences.

Third, he’s just a lousy representative of the NBA. Do I have to bring up the Darfur thing again? He’s a manufactured superstar who has done very little to earn respect for what he does, but rather seems to just sit back and let the league crown him as king because they need individuals to feed their hype machine.

Really, how can he not be seen as overhyped at this point? It will be very interesting to watch the Cleveland-Boston matchup in round 2. I hope KG goes easy on the poor guy; he has such a tough time getting fouled while he’s traveling his ass towards the basket.

Alternative minimum schmack

It’s that most momentous of days today, tax day. Funny how income tax in the US reveals so much about us, both in general and individually. Let’s start with the former and move to the latter, in an orderly, linear fashion that upholds the spirit of the tax forms themselves.

First, I noticed that it was a complete mob scene at the post office yesterday, which suggests that a lot of my fellow Americans are just as procrastinatory as I am. Although my rationalization for sending my taxes in at the last moment is that I’m putting off giving up my money as long as possible, so that I can earn a little more interest. However, that was probably more than offset by the extra stamps I randomly put on the envelopes to avoid waiting in the huge line to buy the exact postage. So that again shows a collective lack of planning by me and my fellow countrymen—another valuable insight.

I also thought about the common wisdom about a few tax-related topics, and by common wisdom here I of course mean stubborn ignorance. The best example of this is the deduction for interest paid on a home mortgage. People often like to blather about the wonderous shower of money that rains down upon you when you own a home, because hey, you can deduct the mortgage interest off your taxes! But hello, if you think about this for two seconds, you realize that you aren’t making any money. You’re just not paying tax on top of the interest that you already paid. In other words, you’re getting kicked in the head, but not stomped on the foot. I suppose that could be seen as a net gain in the optimist’s world. Speaking of optimism, viewing a tax refund as a good thing is a bit wack in my mind. Congratulations, you’ve been giving the government a free loan of your money rather than saving it yourself. This in the same country where people shriek about being trapped in a nanny state when it comes to things like wearing a seatbelt, or being allowed to blow cigarette smoke in other people’s faces.

Now to some specifics. I learned (once again) that I am exercising a smart career choice by not being an accountant or tax professional. I made two giant, honking errors in my first draft of the tax forms, which would have cost us some $1100. That ain’t too cool. I also am finally coming to grips with the reality that I should really get some damn tax software to figure all this stuff out, rather than doing it by hand. There’s just some persistent, crazy corner of my brain that doesn’t trust that the software is any better at this than I am; or rather, that a roomful of programmers, all equally or perhaps slightly less smart than I am, could actually achieve a better result than I with my pencil and my calculator. Hell, Danielle cheerfully reported to me that in New Zealand the government figures your tax for you, and then sends you a check or a bill. Can you imagine this working in the US? People here are suspicious of the freaking census, for chrissakes.

Anyway, I hope the Postal Service enjoys my extra fifty cents or so of postage. I wonder if I can deduct that off my taxes next year. Just think, that’s free money!

Speechless

Here’s what Mitt Romney said yesterday when he dropped out of the presidential race:

I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating al-Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

What a tool. What a huge tool. Yeah, that’s not exactly reasoned political debate on my part, but the implication that voting for a Democrat is equivalent to “surrendering to terror” is so beyond batshit crazy that it’s hard to respond in a rational manner. It’s this kind of laughable rhetoric that makes me wonder how anyone takes these people seriously. (Although not enough people considered Romney worth taking seriously, so maybe that’s something.) The fearmongering worked in 2004, but since then it has seemed as though Americans were finally getting a clue regarding the current administration’s corrupt mismanagement. I can only hope that Romney chose his words less for their general impact and more as a coded message to the conservative base that he’s still willing to drink the crazy juice. Damn, what a freak show American politics is.

P.S. I’m also irritated that text after my blockquotes is always formatted all nasty. What gives?!

A bit of rantiness

Awright, a few things large and small that are torquing me today.

1. Dude on the bus who rides all the way to the last stop, but stands right at the front for the whole trip. Every poor soul who wants to get on or off before the last stop has to squeeze by this guy even though there are acres of space further back where he could stand. Hey prick, think of someone besides yourself for twenty whole minutes, ok?


2. I can only read Glenn Greenwald every couple of weeks, to keep my teeth-grinding to a minimum. Bombing Iran? A politicized military? Crazy Rudy Giuliani and his defense of torture? It keeps me up at night.


3. Caitlin Flanagan. Why, why, why does the Atlantic keep printing her silliness? I cannot stand her self-centered, frail flower of womanhood crap. A blog would serve her so much better, where she could blab about herself without having to maintain the pretense that she’s writing about topics of broad relevance.


4. The phishing email I got today that included my email address, my eBay ID, and my full name. What the hell is that? Time to change a few passwords and hope for the best. And let’s see if I get any kind of response from eBay now that I’ve reported it to them.

A little catch-up

It’s been way, way too long since I posted, sorry about that. I’ve been waiting for a theme to surface that covers the last couple of weeks, but it turns out I got nothing. So here’s a summary.

New nephew! Welcome to Earth, Corey Michael.

Work kind of sucks. Counting on other people doesn’t work when they’re slacking fuckups. And getting a lengthy lecture from the Usual Suspect is enough to sour my cornflakes for days. At least I have an office door I can close when it all weighs on me a little too heavily. And, of course, there are good points such that I shouldn’t stalk out the door with no plan for the future. But still, right now it’s generally bleah.

Tennis is better. Despite my automatic feeling of disappointment for getting demoted down a skill level, the last three matches have been a lot more enjoyable than the first three. And not just because we won two of them. (Although: hooray!) When I play people who are a little more laid-back, it’s a lot easier to temper my naturally psychotic competitiveness. Having said that, I do have a bit of advice for people who play in social leagues: please, please, keep the score carefully. Giving yourself a boost by announcing it’s 15-15 when it should be 0-30 makes you look like a tool. (I’m glad we ended up beating them anyway, despite losing more than one game due to the crappy scorekeeping.)

Cycling is an obsession. But you dear readers already knew that. Last Saturday we rode 35 miles, the second longest ride ever. And it felt great. Just signed up for this year’s Hub on Wheels, too. This year the goal is 45 miles!

Hooray for Crowded House. Not only did they kick ass both nights I saw them in August, they had Kufala sell discs of the complete live shows. I’ll happily pay $20 to get a soundboard-quality recording, over a free one taped by the audience that sounds like shit on toast.

Live Nation/Clear Channel sucks. Thanks to their dickishness, CH shows performed at their venues have been pulled off Kufala and can’t be sold. Monopolistic jackasses. At least their bogus patent got busted. Still, there is work to be done to bring these bastards down.

Happy Birthday to MWL. Somehow I missed the first anniversary of this blog. I bet nobody else noticed, either. But how about that! Blogito, ergo sum.

The passing of the Rove

Thanks to the arrival of the Atlantic Monthly late last week, my disgust with the Bush administration has resurged to the point where it’s been hard to think of anything else. So my emotions are decidedly mixed with today’s top story of Karl Rove resigning from the White House staff. Of course, I immediately thought about the whole rat leaving sinking ship metaphor, and the whole door hitting him in the ass thing (I sincerely hope it does), but that all seems inadequate when confronted with the legacy of someone as despicable as Rove. This timely article does a good job providing an outline of what exactly Rove did to succeed so well at campaign politics, and how he was such a spectacular fuckup at helping run a functional government.

But what’s missing from that piece is the outrage, the deep personal sense of fury I feel at what has been done to my government and my country for the last seven years. By treating every minute of every day as part of a political campaign, Rove managed to strip all vestiges of competence out of the government. Spurred by his scorched-earth attitude and monomania of securing a permanent Republican majority, the executive branch abrogated its responsibility to govern. Instead of competent people, we got political hacks put in charge of things like FEMA and managing post-Saddam Iraq. And not surprisingly, they blindly and stupidly steered the bus into the ditch. People have fucking died because of these idiots: victims of Katrina, soldiers, American civilians, and a staggering number of Iraqi civilians in Iraq. Am I a godless liberal brainwashee to notice that? Meanwhile, Rove didn’t even want Bush to land the plane from which he surveyed the Katrina damage, and we are forever stuck with the image of President Chimpface standing under a banner that declared “Mission Accomplished.”

Along with the competence, we also lost any shred of civility in political life. Considering how tenuous Bush’s claim to the presidency has been (and I’m being charitable there, please recognize) in both elections, it didn’t seem like too much to hope for that he really would try to be a uniter rather than a divider. But instead Bush managed to alienate even his own party in Congress, not to mention those of us who never cast a vote for him but still live under his management. And the mainstream media has been cowed to the point where they publish unvarnished partisan propaganda without question or analysis lest someone scream about their “liberal bias” or they lose access to the spin-controlled crumbs the administration throws them. Believe me, it’s hard to take the prez seriously when he seems more interested in whether foreign aid might lead to someone buying a condom than whether his casus belli for Iraq was actually legitimate.

So Rove is finally resigning. Well, the cynic in me can ruefully say, he’s certainly done enough damage such that he deserves a nice break. And I get no joy out of the resignation, considering how many years it’s going to take before all the mistakes of the Bush administration are rectified—assuming that someone still remembers how to actually run the government in this country. It’s definitely not going to be easy to explain to the next generation how we let this happen.

Arrrgh

Small frustrations all, but they add up.

• Nasty head cold for the last four days


• Arenas and Butler out for the season


• Elvis Costello tickets weirdly out of reach because eeeevil Ticketma$ter wants me to pay with a Visa


• Ridiculous $8 “convenience charge” per ticket should I ever be able to actually buy the damn tickets


• Cut my vacation short to try to make a deadline that I ended up not making, and that it turned out I didn’t even need to try to make in the first place!

Arrrrrrrgh!

Home is anywhere you hang your clogs

In the midst of the chaotic and angst-filled move at work (D-Day is coming up fast, Feb. 23!) it now becomes apparent that the once-hypothetical plan to find a pad with more space is coalescing into reality. The main reason for wanting to buy a new place? Well, there’s the rational, and the emotional. Rational is that it would be very nice to have a third bedroom, for hosting all our nonexistent guests that come to visit, or perhaps for stashing all the guitars and the keyboard and amps and other music-related stuff. Rational is that it would be very, very nice to have more than one bathroom. Rational is that now that prices are sliding, why not upgrade into Swankitude, Mark II. And that’s all good in theory, but it’s the emotional that has me practically running out the door of the place I’ve been happily living in for the last 2.5 years: the upstairs neighbors.

I can even narrow it down further: the female upstairs neighbor. Sure, she seems like a person of normal weight and height, and in possession of the normal amount of empathy toward fellow humans, but in reality she stomps around like a drunken overweight moose at a clog dance. And it’s back and forth, back and forth, all the damn time, starting at a ridiculously early time of day.

(I’ve been doing my best not to mention the 1-year-old toddler, by the way, who is far too young to do anything but the Frankenstein Walk and certainly can’t be blamed for crashing to the floor and/or dropping things at unpredictable moments. Not that it ain’t annoying.)

I can blame the unparalleled ruckus directly on Ms. Clog-Dancing Moose (CDM) quite easily, because last summer she was gone for three months and it was absolute bliss. Mr. Moose, despite being not a small guy, walked around more like Felt-Slipper-Wearing Mouse—and I would also like to point out that he is eminently considerate in general, always apologizing after flooding the shared basement or flooding our bathroom or flooding the basement a second time. Meanwhile, the swami went up there last week to beg for a minor concession, that the clog dancing be moved to a room other than the one above our bedroom in the early mornings, and found out that CDM is not only heavy-footed, but also bereft of all empathy and conscience.

So we’re starting to look at the listings and got in touch with the Realtor (tm) that helped us buy last time. It looks like there is a lot of good stuff out there, and hopefully it’s not the usual hyperbole of exuberant and semi-unscrupulous selling agents making shit up. I’ll try to provide updates as things happen, and hopefully will have some good horror stories regarding other people’s decorating ideas (though it will be hard to top the Cheetah Wallpaper Bathroom of 2001).

Wish me luck, fair readers, for this way lies madness!

Time won’t give me time

When am I going to grow a spine and cancel my subscription to Time magazine? My major complaint is that over the years they’ve been subtly and gradually changing the tone to one that is less like reporting and more like advertising. I even got torqued up enough last September to send an email accusing one writer of being a shill for a business whose product he reviewed. In the offending “article,” which I don’t feel like identifying because it will just name the damn product another time, was about a new cell phone. After gushing about the phone itself, quoting the manufacturer’s own description of the phone, the writer actually advised buying it now rather than waiting for other providers to offer it because one “may never again find a monthly rate this good.” In this era of uber-crass commercialization, does this kind of plug bother only me? For what it’s worth, I did get a reply to my email, but it was not in any way apologetic and rather defended how cool he thought the phone was. So be warned: Time magazine now carries bought-and-paid-for ads, as well as masquerading-as-articles ads.

The latest misstep is, of course, the now infamous “Person of the Year” issue where it was Us, the DIY You-Tubers who lurve to use teh Internets as our new medium of navel-gazing. Far be it from me to ignore the irony of bitching about it on my blog (and of course I’m also a couple of weeks late and the Eye of the People has certainly moved on by now). But come on. Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il, maybe someone involved in that Iraq thing going on, hell, even Vladimir Putin and his growing fondness for trying to bully the world through manipulation of the energy supply. I mean, do I matter even a tiny bit in the grand scheme of things in contrast to the aforementioned dudes? Sure, I love YouTube, sure I dig keeping up with the peeps blog-style. But it ain’t the most important shit that happened last year. Get some perspective, hmm?

So why do I continue to subscribe to this damn mag? Well, there’s certainly inertia at work. And they do a decent job in the front third of the mag to give me the lowdown on the week’s happenings. Hey, maybe I should just cancel until the 2008 presidential campaign starts to heat up. Uh—wait a second...

I Hate Christmas, Part 2

Well, the annual holiday fiasco is finally over and I’m safely back in the Snorklewacker Cave. Actually, the fiasco rating was quite low this year; much lower than it’s been in the past. One major reason for the relatively low level of stress was that we flew down to the family homesteads instead of driving—no 10 hours of slogging down the East Coast Megalopolis through holiday traffic. Just a couple hours of JetBlue entertaining me with XM radio. Why have we not been flying every year?? Also, the family strife and drama was at a minimum this year for some reason. Overall I managed to see three siblings, three nephews, the new(ish) niece, three siblings-in-law, one parent, one step-parent, two in-laws, and four friends over six days. Whew.
As for gifts, I simply must call out these two hideous apple figurine things for special mockery. Aren’t they awful? Egads. Anybody who wants ’em, they are yours, yours, yours. I ship internationally.

I Hate Christmas, Part 1

I need to buy a generic gift for the office Yankee swap on Thursday. At the moment I’m nearly homicidally irritated with half of my co-workers, and therefore not interested in giving any of them a gift, and friendly enough with the other half to know that they are dreading the swap just as much as I am. Blah, what to buy? At this point I think the default is food, although that just screams uninspired. Last year somebody tried the ultimate tacky move and unwrapped his own present. (Although he didn’t count on me taking it from him, heheh!) Hmph, I’m not feeling the holiday cheer over here. Christmas is such a pain in the ass. Well, except for the proliferation of chocolate. But I refuse to look for an upside while I’m in this cranky mood.

Hieronymus Bosch in a down parka

It’s been cold outside today. Cold in an empty-void-of-outer-space kind of way. I was out there wrapped in my warmest coat, two hats, hands inside gloves inside pockets and I could tell you exactly which square inches of my body were not covered in enough layers. (Ankles, bridge of the nose, toes.) And it’s times like that when you begin to grasp the speck-like insignificance of humanity, that the very air around you is not your friend as it tries to suck the life out of your body and the heat out of your skin. It makes me glad that medieval artists didn’t know about physics, because if they had, the center of the most ghoulish painting or carving depicting the horrific depths of hell would not have Satan at the center, but Thermodynamics, represented by a blank-eyed quadruple-fanged serpent with an empty belly drinking the warm life-force right out of its innocent victims, diamond-studded eyes staring with the cruel impersonality of a relentless, mindless force. (Or maybe I shouldn’t have watched any of Queen of the Damned on basic cable last night, a truly awful movie by one of the more awful writers of paperbacks I loved when I was a teenager, because it’s making me feel Gothic and tragic and positively overwrought. Moreover, to expand this parenthetical aside past the point of reason, Van Helsing was on basic cable tonight and I can confirm that it really sucks. I mean, you can’t even watch it for more than a few minutes at a time because the pain in your head intensifies with every second. Normally good actors acting very badly, bad actors acting badly, special effects that look completely cheesy, David Wenham’s appallingly terrible haircut, etc. Yeesh.)

Now I’ve lost my train of thought. Anyway, it was damn cold today and I’m someone who likes it cold. At the same time, for the next several days I’ll be the only person in this big house and that’s exacerbating this cold feeling. I’ve been blasting the TV and the music, and that helps. The next step is tossing this tiny stone into the giant ocean of cyberspace and causing a couple of ripples to remind the world that I’m over here generating heat, using electricity, and just generally being alive. Hey, remind me not to play “Log Cabin Fever” by Split Enz this week, okay? At least, not until Swami gets back from his trip to China.