12/26/08

My only true competition: me

Well, honestly, y'all! I just spent 7 hours transferring all my words from their old home to this clean new house... and I'm blown away! (In retrospect, there may have been an easier way to do this, but at the time the most efficient way of moving the blog seemed like reading each entry out loud into a tape recorder, and then playing them back to myself to transcribe... Do I really sound that way?)

It's like... you never realize just how many pets you have until the city forces you to move, you know? That's what it was like with my blog entries! (Except those posts didn't crap everywhere and give me toxoplasmosis.)

I did the math, and over the two years I kept that blog, I averaged just short of 2 entries per hour (totaling up neatly at 63 entries for me to transfer). Early 2007, apparently, was a frighteningly prolific time for me. It made me worried for a little while that I might be getting lazier (not to mention dumber—some of those posts are very, very sharp).

This is a real concern for me. Laziness, I believe, runs in my family, and it seems to get worse with age. My grandparents, as I remember it, were relatively active when I was little, but as they got older they all became increasingly lazy, to the point where they refused to walk around without canes, or even (in a couple cases) feed themselves. It was pathetic—hey, Gramps, I want to sleep in too, but some members of the family have to work now and again!

Anyway, my anxiety was at about an 8 for around half an hour (have I ever mentioned that I have anxiety? I do), until I remembered that, during the early part of 07 I was almost entirely neglecting paying any attention to my gluten sensitivity. Too much gluten, and I'm like a meth-head with $30 and a knife. It's a cumulative issue, really, but I was spending a lot of time at the Cinnabon, and to say that I was asking for trouble would be putting it mildly. I was on a collision course with disaster, and if it hadn't been for my grandmother dying I'm not sure I ever would have pulled out of it. There's nothing like seeing a loved one allow herself to die of laziness to make you give your own lifestyle a very careful examination.

So enjoy those entries, but don't look for something similar in the future—not if you value my health. Those were the beat days, my friends. I was Burroughs shooting glasses off my own head, Ginsburg, howling at the Cinnabon dumpster, and Kerouac, drinking myself to death in my mother's living room. Heady, vital times, but no good for your health. I know, right?

Also... there's something I should address here. There were a couple of posts from the summer and fall of 2007 in which I had some very harsh words for business associates that, even now, I have not totally severed ties to. I considered leaving those posts to decay in the inter-ether, but, no, they're just as valuable a part of my (our) history as my review of the recent James Bond movie. I don't want to get into the specifics (it's all there for anyone willing and wanting to root around in the shit—public record, you know?), but, well, I'm man enough now—even if I wasn't then—to admit that that brand of vitriolic journalism (yes, journalism) is, ultimately, not very helpful. And, what's more, while association with the stinking affair doesn't say much that's positive about the Science Museum, it turns out that someone outside the organization was responsible for the "mix up" (a tremendous understatement, but we'll leave it at that). I recall that I may have compared the museum unfavorably to the institution of human slavery, and that really wasn't fair. Also, I understand now that it's rude, and simply a bad business decision, to refer to your employers as "rat-rapers." Now, the organization employs hundreds of staff, and, given the incidence of sexual perversion in our society, the odds are against it in regards to being entirely free of rat-raping... but, for the sake of full disclosure, I have no specific knowledge of anyone at the museum raping a rat. I mean, there are some (a lot) who honestly seem like the type... Whatever. Let's consider that matter settled. Henceforth, we shall regard that post with the same tolerance and understanding you might afford your grandfather's anti-Japanese Thanksgiving dinner rantings.

Just so we're clear, I love the Japanese. Maybe even more than I love my own white people.

I believe strongly in recycling

I do, I do. Ask my garbage man—he knows better than anyone, I suppose.

Anyway, this video did find its way into my old blog, but I still like it very much, and it hasn't yet made all the money I hoped it would. So here it is again.

Think of this as, like, a Special Edition DVD, without the DVD. As a special edition, y'all get some extras. Extra commentary, anyway.

In response to many of the questions I received regarding the making of this film:

No, that's not my hand, that's the hand (hands) of a professional actor I hired for the job. We can all think of some directors who force their way into their own films starring roles, and, frankly, more often than not it's embarrassing. Please, Mr. Eastwood, I know you like filming yourself shooting teenagers, but stick to what you're best at: directing, and selling natural foods.

Yes, the actor attached to that hand was naked. But that's how that's how it's supposed to be. A lot of people didn't pick this up through their first few viewings, but, clearly, the protagonist is naked naked naked. It's vital to the character, so don't lay your sexual holdups on me. I didn't enjoy filming a naked man. We used my cubicle as the set, for God's sake, and I had to throw away my desk chair when we were through. And I have a suspicion that the project may have contributed, in part, to my eventual termination from the company (but again, that's all for the best, even if art weren't involved).

What else... Oh! Well, you might find this interesting: that, in fact, is not paper—it's vellum. Actual spiral bound paper looks hideous on film (I'm not into digital, sorry), and the beautiful, buttery look of vellum in the final product is easily worth its high price, don't you think?

And so:

We grow older, we get stronger

It's true (about growing older and getting stronger). We would be foolish to deny it. And so, in the spirit of not denying things, I am starting another blog.

Really, it's more of an old blog, The Chesterton Review, but I just don't have time for that garbage anymore. No, I'm diverting my energies to this brave new blog, The Chesterton Review.

As you can see, there have been some pretty serious cosmetic changes from the T.C.R.'s old look, thanks to some Google web designer, or web page designing artificial intelligence. Also, I've found that I've drifted away from the Myspace (TCR's former home). It used to be like a small town, and now it's like a small town full of perverts and teenagers (I don't particularly like either, and together they are just about unbearable). To put it simple, MySpace just doesn't make a lot of sense to me any more. And isn't that sad? "My space" is no longer mine? I feel like how the Indians must have felt? (Do they still feel that way? I hate to put words in people's heads.)

Anyway, I'm hopeful about this change. I expect Frisky Chesterton will drop by sometime, to regale us with his science bullshit, and maybe I'll be able to write a little more often. Part of this has to do with my recent dearth of employment—it turns out that no one wants to be billed for medical insurance, and I wasn't going to force it on them, and my former employer wasn't interested in my all-too-American attitude. Fine by me. We know how communism has turned out in the past, and I don't want to have anything to do with that company when lowish class malcontents are looking for brass to put up against the wall.

Still, I expect the readership of the 'Review to be limited to Frisky and myself for some time to come—I want to generate a little more content for y'all before I start paying for advertisement. At the very least I'd like to figure out how to import my old posts here. (Although, in many respects, those were written by a very different person, and I'm not proud of some
of the things he said. I'd like to blame it all on Frisky, but we're better men than that, aren't we?)

(We are.)

6/12/08

Motion pictures

I made this photographic flipbook at work. It's one of the many, many upsides of working a weekend in an empty building.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaowKP7uiyw&fmt=18

5/23/08

Spicy hot schmidt

Okay. Sorry. I'm super sorry that I haven't written in my blog for a super long time. Yeah, right.

I'm super sorry that I'm raking in TONS of money, instead of sitting around, thinking of ways to keep everyone from killing themselves, because that's WAY more fun.

See, I don't know if y'all heard, but I'm pretty hot shit these days. Like, boiling toilet water hot shit, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. I have responsibilities--to myself and to my employer.

Who is my employer, my benefactor, my sugar daddy? Well, I don't think it's appropriate to give you a specific name (I'm professional that way), but let it be said that I'm now employed by the billing department of a VERY large insurance company. I mean, I have my own office.

My office is approximately is approximately 8' x 8' (do the math, that's 64 big square feet of floor space, ladies), and it has the convenient feature of having walls short enough for me to see over. Try sneaking up on me. You can't, unless you try it when I'm sitting down, or if you come from behind.

What do I do here (besides write in The Chesterton Review at 11:23 am?) Well, that's a little more complicated. Ostensibly, I bill people for insurance--that's how it shows up on paper anyway. However, I don't believe that they would have hired anyone who talked as much about poison making in his interview as I did to simply bill the sort of jerk who wants insurance. So I try to concentrate more on brainstorming new types of poison (e.g. "Very Berry"), and work on billing as a secondary activity.

This is how the world changes people.



Ways to keep from killing yourself:
1) Duct tape oven mitts over your hands (you'll need the help of a friend, if you have any)
2) Sleeping pills (not too many, mind you, but just try killing yourself in your sleep.)
3) Money. Rich people don't kill themselves. Fact. Google it.
4) A Kevlar body suit. Buy one, wear it all the time.
5) Always ask yourself, "Am I trying to kill myself right now?" If you find that the answer is "yes," stop what you're doing. Just freeze. Unless you're trying to freeze yourself to death, then go do something warmer, and ask yourself the question again in a little bit.

2/7/08

How do I get these naked pictures of myself off my phone?!?!

Jiminy Christmas! For Cupcake's Sake!

How do I get these damn naked pictures of me off my cell phone? I'm going crazy here! I tell you, I'm finally beginning to understand karma. I skip church just once, again, and all of a sudden something like this happens.

I know how this stuff works, by the way. It happens all the time - like me, celebrities will, for some entirely innocent reason, get a couple of naked pictures of themselves on their phones, and before you know it the pictures get leaked to the tabloids, and, well . .  look at Britney. So I'm going to lay it on the line, and just let y'all know what the deal is, before some newspaperman tries to drag me through the mud (not literally - just imagine the pictures of that!).

It all started when I was trying to figure out what the back of my head looks like. No, actually it all started when I accidentally took a picture of my right eyeball, inadvertently discovering that my phone was also a camera. But not long after that I was trying to take a picture of the back of my head. It worked. The picture wasn't very interesting, but it worked. So then I decided to see what I looked like sitting in a chair, reading a book. It was kind of hard to hold the book and the phone, but that kind of worked too. Then I wanted to see what I looked like crawling out from under my own bed. I looked pretty good doing that, actually, and I wanted to find out what I'd look like doing the same thing naked. No big deal, you know? And that just lead to a whole series of experiments . . . What I look like climbing my bookshelf naked, what I look like pointing at the wall naked, what I look like talking on the phone naked (I had to use a mirror). Anyhoo, I was at it all day. Then I fell asleep and pretty much forgot about the whole thing.

Well, long story short, here I am, a month later, trying to find where I stored the number for Dairy Queen. And I found something, but it had nothing to do with cool eats: almost two hundred and fifty hundred naked pictures of myself. I tried to delete them, but-you know me, a regular troglodyte-it never worked out. Now, whenever my mother calls a picture of me jumping on my bed - naked - comes up. And my mom calls me all the time!

I'm at my wits' end! Sweet Mother of Fudge! I think I just have to get a new phone. But what should I do with this old one? Bury it? Mail it back to the company?

I just hope this has been a lesson to everyone. Don't let history repeat itself.
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